BlackRock subsidiary iShares manages the Silver Trust (SLV).
SLV boasts an average daily trading volume of more than 11 million shares (11 Mil ounces) and is (supposedly) backed with physical silver held by a third party (custodian) in New York and London. SLV is passively managed, with an annual expense ratio of 0.50 percent of net asset value. Each unit represents one ounce of silver.Units are redeemable for physical silver in minimum basket sizes of 50,000 units. Investors with smaller baskets must wait until their redemption orders are combined with others to reach the 50,000 unit minimum, exposing them to price changes.
The image shown is from the last audit SLV has done. It is dated 20/03/2020. Four days after the silver price collapsed. JPMorgan Chase is the custodian of SLV. Yes, the same JP Morgan who was fined US$ 920Mil in Sept. 2020 for manipulation of the PM markets.
https://goldsilver.com/blog/why-the-collapse-of-bear-stearns-changed-the-silver-market-forever/ JP Morgan took over Bear Sterns in 2008 and with it the largest short position in silver.
Bear Stearns’ failure coincided, to the day, with gold hitting all-time highs (over $1000) and silver hitting 30 year highs ($21). It’s easy to calculate that Bear lost more than $2 billion in being short gold and silver from yearend 2007 to mid-March 2008.
The discovery, in September 2008, that JP Morgan was now the largest short seller in COMEX gold and silver made it clear that the CFTC lied in its previous public letters denying there was no problem with big shorts in the silver market.
Only after JP Morgan bought enough physical silver by 2012 to 2013 to cover Bear Stearns’ former COMEX paper short position, did it realize it didn’t have to stop accumulating metal as a defensive measure; but that it had the means, motive and opportunity to turn what was a highly defensive original motive into a highly offensive one in terms of an unprecedented pure money-making opportunity.
Why else would JP Morgan, perhaps the purest example of a profit-making machine, go on to buy 700 million ounces of physical silver, if not to profit? Not that it may matter much when JP Morgan switched from defense to offense, but none of this would have probably occurred had JP Morgan not taken over Bear Stearns. That’s why I feel the takeover is the most important development in the modern history of silver.
Fast forward to 2021:
1.5Billion ounces of paper silver were dumped by 8 traders in the morning trade last Tuesday. That is 1 1/2 times of the yearly silver production.
But hey, nothing fishy is going on in the silver market.
GLTA
