Is JP Morgan Shorting Paper Metals While Acquiring Massive Physical Stockpiles?

*Updated

Manipulation explained, or pure disinformation orchestrated  to pre-emptively manage the fallout of the coming JP Morgan silver manipulation scandal?

As silver investors are likely aware, leading silver analyst Ted Butler has openly speculated whether JP Morgan’s alleged massive short silver position is held on behalf a client such as the Federal Reserve (with the intent to prop up the dollar by suppressing gold and silver) or the Chinese government (with the intent of acquiring physical gold and silver bullion at a discount due to their massive paper short position on the futures market).

The Doc has long privately wondered whether the bullion banks’ PM short positions could actually be leveraging their own physical bullion accumulation by artificially suppressing the paper futures price.

These thoughts originate in our following of Jim Sinclair, who has always maintained that the bullion banks will be the one’s making the lion’s share of the profits in this great secular gold and silver bull market.   One thing the bullion banksters are not is dumb, and they can see the writing on the wall for the US dollar as well as any SD or ZH reader.

New commentary from a bullion insider who claims to have personally managed the movement of 27 million ounces of gold from HSBC’s vaults into JP Morgan’s seems to substantiate Sinclair’s claims.

The industry insider has come forward claiming that JP Morgan’s paper short position is in fact a hedged trade (as Blythe Masters claimed here)- and claims that JPM is in fact MASSIVELY LONG PHYSICAL GOLD AND SILVER HELD IN THEIR OWN PRIVATE VAULTS while short the paper futures market. 
 
Is JP Morgan actually a double agent shorting the paper metals market for their own benefit?

The claim is not only rational, but it also would perfectly explain why the CFTC has opened three separate investigations into silver market manipulation, and has yet to charge anyone with manipulation of silver.

Clearly, if JP Morgan’s commodities desk was accumulating massive physical gold and silver inventories in their own personal vaults, they would be able to claim their paper short position is a legitimate hedge- essentially leveraging their physical position against the paper COMEX futures market itself.

Miles Franklin’s David Schectman states he has been in contact with the insider, who claims JPM is massively long physical gold and silver bullion stored in their own warehouses:

Whereas Ted Butler focuses on JP Morgan and “the Big Four Commercial Banks,” and their perpetual “short” position in silver (and gold), I don’t recall him ever suggesting that they actually own the physical silver to offset their short positions.

My friend Trader David R flatly states that this IS the case; he has seen the silver with his own eyes in London. In fact, he asked me to come with him last year and told me he would bring me to the vaults and personally show me the silver. Last winter he emailed me and said, “I will be going to London in May; if want to come along, I am sure I can get you a tour of a few of the major banks vaults (JPM included) and you can see all of the gold and silver for yourself ?”
 
For those inquiring minds wishing for a little background on this mysterious gold trader David R:

I worked at some of the largest bullion banks in the world over my career and I ran all types of books and did a lot of business with Central Banks around the globe.  I was involved in the largest gold hedge ever done in the history of the world back in 1996. This has been my life for the past 18 years. From 2000 to 2006 I was the gold trader at Barclays London. I have worked for AIG, Barclays, and UBS, some of the biggest bullion desks in the world.

I worked for three of the major bullion banks for 11 years and was in charge of Barkleys gold book and the hired 42 Brinks trucks to move our 27 million ounces of gold out of HSBC ‘s vault and into JPMs vault when HSBC raised storage costs on us, I am 100% positive that it’s there. I know we had 27 million ounces of gold on our daily balance sheet and the other big banks all had around the same amounts.

David R left Barclays and moved to Manhattan to work for one of the largest and most successful privately held hedge funds in NYC. He was in charge of the precious metals trading department, and supervised dozens of the most talented precious metal’s traders in NYC. I was told by a reliable source that every metals trader worth his salt would kill to work for that firm. The traders were not salaried, they worked on commission and they all made BIG money. That is where I met David. He gave me a personal tour of their trading department. His understanding of the gold and silver industry and his resume is as good as it gets.

The trader states that JPM is indeed massively long physical precious metals and set to vastly benefit from the coming mania, precisely as Jim Sinclair has long predicted:

They buy the physical silver at the same time they sell the future (on Comex) futures trade in contango (higher price than spot physical) they get zero interest rate cash from FED so borrow the money for free, they own the vaults to store the silver…. so as the future comes to maturity they can either settle against their physical long or roll the future to collect more free contango…. This is pure arbitrage paid for by the FED.  This has been going on for over 30 years and why shouldn’t they be allowed to have 25% of the Open Interest?  There is no manipulation because they are short the futures and long the physical and have “ZERO” price risk, but nice profits!  It’s brilliant trading and completely 100% legal and that’s why they will never be charged with manipulation because there is none going on. Sometimes it’s just that easy!

David R states there is no massive shortage of physical silver- it is just being hoarded by the bullion banks in their own private vaults ahead of dollar devaluation and collapse:

Let’s go and visit their vaults and you can see all the physical silver there… Lease rates are at full carry +.  There is no shortage what so ever and the banks are charging 40 bp for storage because they cannot find any more space to put it all, you can take all the physical you want!  The JPM manipulation is not a manipulation, but a way of trading that has been going on for years. JPM is short futures (due to contango) and long physical.  People need to understand that metals are just a derivative of the interest rate market and once people do, they will get a better understanding why the market moves the way it does.
I explained to you what HSBC and JPM do on the silver.  They get $ from the FED for free.  

They own all the storage vaults, so they do not have to pay the fees for storage.  They then own the physical silver in their vaults and sell the futures contracts (which are in contango) at a much higher price than OTC price so then hold the both till delivery.  Since there is no cost for $ and no cost for storage, they made a fortune on earning the contango of the silver and gold market. It’s a brilliant strategy, which has made them a fortune.

If you sat with me for a day I could show you how this market really works.

Miles Franklin’s David Schectman states he has known David R for over four years, that he is legitimate and the real deal, and that although David states JPM’s short silver (and gold) positions are NOT naked, it is massively bullish for both metals, stating:

He is absolutely convinced that gold and silver are going MUCH, MUCH higher. He told me last week that with the Fed’s latest “open-ended” QE edict, the dollar and bond market are done, finished and the bull market in gold is guaranteed! As far as he is concerned, Bernanke has sold out our kids and grandchildren and it no longer makes any difference who occupies the White House!

As mentioned previously, if JPM is shorting gold and silver futures with the intent of eventually breaking the futures market/ physical price link to the metals, this would explain motive (pure profit- always the ONLY motive for a bankster), as well as the reason why the CFTC has been unable to charge JPM with manipulation of the silver market- even though they routinely fleece the specs using their algos and raids.


While we have always believed the bullion banks will be long gold and silver when it really matters at the end of this massive secular bull, there are several points about trader David R’s claims bother us- this trader claims JPM is simply arbitraging futures vs. physical using 0%  cash from the Fed- but there have been single days (May 2nd, 2011 and Sept 21st I think it was for starters) in which the COMEX volume surpassed global mining output for the entire year.   JPM’s physical holdings can not possibly equal their net paper short position (just on the COMEX, not to mention their OTC positions).

This trader also claims there is no shortage of physical metal, it is simply all being stored in JPM’s private vault and he has seen the metal himself.  Our thought is that he may have seen the metal, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been rehypothecated and there are 1,000 people who believe they own it.

Finally, when we ran this story by our friend Ned Naylor-Leyland, he believes it is pure disinformation, stating that the story is a bit like the Blythe Masters interview- and was orchestrated purely to pre-emptively manage the fallout of the coming JP Morgan silver manipulation scandal.

See our related post: What IF JP Morgan was Actually BUYING Physical Silver? *video* 

Check out these similar articles from Silver Doctors:

1. Why is JP Morgue Acquiring Massive Amounts of Physical Platinum?
2. Massive Paper Inventory Volatility in COMEX Silver Warehouses Hiding Physical Tightness
3. David Morgan: Shorting the Bond Market is the Next Big Trade
4. Q&A With The Doc: How Can Paper Silver Affect the Price of Physical?
5. A Blueprint to Kill JP Morgan’s Alleged Massive Manipulative Position in the Silver Futures Market