by Ted Butler
Silver Seek
I started calculating the financial plight of the 8 big shorts in COMEX gold and silver on a twice-weekly basis around June 2019. That’s when gold moved higher. The big shorts had added quite aggressively to short positions early in the move and when gold rose $100, the big shorts were out $2.2 billion. As gold rose, the big shorts kept getting deeper and deeper into a financial hole. From the end of the third quarter of 2019 when the 8 big shorts were underwater by $2.4 billion, the losses have progressively worsened over the five subsequent quarters to yearend 2020, when the combined loss hit $14 billion.
The drastic turn in the financial fortunes for the 8 big shorts is not the only change that has occurred since the summer of 2019. A development I believe may be just as important, is the change in the composition of the big shorts. The former king of the big shorts since 2008, JPMorgan, broke ranks and completely covered its gold and silver short positions.