By Independent News Roundup
Only two weeks ago the TrendCompass report headline read, “Silver breaks to new all time highs.” The opening paragraph: “On Friday, 9 January COMEX silver futures closed at $79.34/tr.oz., slightly below the all-time high reached three days prior. Then this morning, with the silver price chart looking almost vertical, silver opened gap up, more than $4 higher than Friday’s close and is now trading at around $84.50/tr.oz.”
Today, as I write this report, silver is trading at over $110/tr.oz., more than $25/tr.oz. higher than two weeks ago. This is the thing with commodity prices going vertical: there’s no guessing how high they might reach. In a similar progression, gold soared well past $5,000/tr.oz. What’s happening?
In the past, I’ve predicted that gold and silver might go vertical in the near future, but my reasoning was based on the assymmetry between the massive size of the global shadow banking system and the relatively small size of the precious metals markets (and therefore, if only a small proportion of money managers decide to gain greater exposure to gold and silver, this could push the prices into a vertical climb). But there could be a different explanation.
On Friday, 23 January an AI-generated video appeared in the social media and went viral over the weekend, conveying some extremely alarming news about the price of silver and the massive short position JPMorgan and other banks have accumulated over the years. The video alleges that for 15 years, JPMorgan stood between silver and normal price discovery, rigging the markets and manipulating the price.
In the process, they accumulated a colossal short position of about 6.2 billion ounces as they stepped in every time precious metals looked like they were about to rally and beat them back down again with a fresh short-selling spree. I referred to the process in these reports as, “Mr. Slammy,” as many market participants came to call it. But there was more than rumors and jest to these allegations of market manipulation.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice charged JP Morgan for manipulating the precious metals markets through spoofing, fake orders, and coordinated attacks during low-volume trading hours. The evidence was overwhelming and JPM agreed to pay a $920 million fine. Still, the markets moved on and the game continued.
The above-mentioned video report cited a 6 Jan. 2026 internal JPM risk management memo, which was apparently circulated to the bank’s 17 senior executives. The subject line read, “URGENT: Silver position liquidation protocol initiation,” followed by a densely packed 8-pages of text. Paragraph 3 allegedly stated, “initiate covering operations,” referring to JPM’s alleged 6.2 billion ounce short position.
This is truly hard to believe; for perspective, global silver production is approximately 800 million oz./year and JPM’s short would be 7.75 times that much. Apparently, this short position in silver was accumulated between 2010 and 2024 at an average entry price of below $20/tr.oz. On 6 January, when the memo was published, the price of silver was around $79/tr.oz and JPM’s unrealized losses added up to $377 billion, threatening the firm’s very solvency.
Whether this alleged JPMorgan memo was real or not, the bank clearly did engage in market manipulation and many traders in precious metals markets have been complaining of market manipulation for many years. Some of them filed multiple lawsuits and presented credible evidence about the priactice, implicating JPM and other banks. For that reason, it is hard to dismiss this report out of hand and at the moment, three weeks after the memo’s alleged publication, the markets appear to be driven by a wild short-covering panic.
The question of how high the price could advance was also answered in the alleged memo: it’s $412/tr.oz by Q4, 2026, according to JPM’s anlysts. This is the allegation I would be particularly suspicious of. Nobody can predict future prices, not even the analysts of a bank with the world’s largest short position in silver. Second, tossing out figures like that could be very inflammatory for market participants’ “animal spirits.” Who wouldn’t want to make $300/tr.oz. by throwing caution to the wind and buying all the silver you can get your hands on at the still low price of $110/tr. oz.
More often than not, sensational news like these tend to signify that we are very close to the near-term peak and a substantial correction could be around the corner. If you are already long gold and/or silver, consider lightering up and staying put with partial exposure. If prices go to $412/tr.oz you’ll still be rewarded. But if a punishing correction is on the cards, be sure you have plenty of dry powder to add to your positions after a 20%, 30%, or 50% pullback.
A quick correction: some 30 min. ago I wrote that silver was trading at about $110/tr.oz. It’s now trading at $112/tr.oz. Keep calm and follow trends.
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