Stock market sell off continues with Dow down 1,000 points at opening

Dow down 2500+ over two days at ~noon EST Friday.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...ng/ar-AA1CizuE

The goal is slower global growth, while having deals be made to have higher percentage of global growth in the US.

This would lower inflation due to lower global demand increases.

Gold and silver are being hammered while the mark of the beast money is not.

Meaning the whole thing is staged and carefully crafted by the usual suspects.

It is about shafting the nations of the globe while the American Empire expands. Gold and silver when they get uppity, get hammered by staged events. Looking at crypto proves this is not across the board selling, this is a manufactured crisis.

It's was regardless. Just a matter of timing. Now where are the indictments!

Two reasons why the US did globalism:

(1) Destroy Democratic Catholic-dominated Unions and stop European export economies from replacing the US
(2) Save the dollar from inflation and the threat of gold

These two reasons for globalism are no longer there. Democratic Unions are not the threat they were, and are leaning more and more MAGA.

Crypto is replacing gold as the anti-dollar play, so no need for cheap goods from China, there is the US crypto reserve to go to if the dollar weakens. The US no longer fears hyperinflation as a threat to the Dollar Empire. A dollar collapse would usher in a bitcoin US currency.

Bushite Carlyle Group Powell ready to support Trump to success:

As the new policies and their likely economic effects become clearer, we will have a better sense of their implications for the economy and for monetary policy.

It is too soon to say what will be the appropriate path for monetary policy.

https://www.forexlive.com/centralban...eech-20250404/

It is why gold and silver are being hammered. If there is an inflation threat, you can't significantly drop rates. The US is trying to have a global slow down, to then have US cut rates to lead the recovery. Totally staged. And the more deals are made with Trump, the more success for the American Empire.

The US has no fear of inflation, except the markets do and consumers do. Before the survival of the Dollar Empire rested on the suppression of gold and silver and low inflation. With bitcoin wanting to replace the dollar for an expanded American Empire, Washington is 100% for hyperinflation. It is the markets and consumers that are opposed to this, not knowing the US government is behind bitcoin. So the drops in gold and silver prices from these market drops are part of the agenda - no gold/silver - your choice is the dollar or bitcoin.

Remember for years there was the excuse of why silver and gold would get hammered during huge market downturns, it was often blamed on margin calls. Sell various assets across the board. With investors buying crypto when the market is doing massive selloffs, where are the investors selling shitcoin to cover their losses on wall street.

While there was many margin calls, the silver lower prices during the selloff days was also from staged selling by usual suspects so that silver and gold were not viewed as good and reliable investments during poor market days.

As the economy gets closer to the endgame of bitcoin and expanded American Empire, you get to see their whole rigged game.

While not most investors are into shitcoin. Neither are most investors having gold and silver to sell. Meaning these are staged, the usual suspects are picking which ones to sell and promote.

As I said elsewhere, when silver rebounded 3-4% during the night, Team Trump/Bankers chimped out and had the markets swing up over 2000 points from morning lows. This gave a fake market rally, only intending to take commodities down when the stocks plunged again. And that plan worked, gold is substantially down. The market war is against commodities. The tariff war is about preparing the US to dominate if it goes to bitcoin.

The market downturn is about the American war on gold and silver.

The trade war is about American Economic Empire war to dominate the globe.

Both are in preparation for a bitcoin economy.

Proof the elites want commodities hammered is the fact that since late 2024/early 2025, Republicans were wanting a down market for the fed to be able to lower interest rates. The fed cites higher commodity prices/inflation as a reason for caution.

Gold asking price breaks $3100 this morning and gets close to $3100 bid. Gold up triple digit. Silver up 75 cents. Dow Jones only up marginally before tariff pause.

The dam could not hold, precious metals won. Trump pauses tariff war with many nations on the day silver and gold were outperforming bitcoin and wall street stocks.

If you want to piss off Washington, buy gold and silver. It is the resistance, GIM1 was 100% correct.

Gold to record highs, silver up about a half cent at NYSE closing bell. That pissed off the market manipulators trying to bring down gold with a stock market selloff.

The market manipulators don't want commodity inflation with the stock market recovery. The market manipulators want fed rate cuts.

If the market manipulators can't get their bitcoin as money. If the market manipulators can't defeat gold and silver. If the market manipulators can't get nations to bow and kowtow to Washington in trade parity. Then the market manipulators want rate cuts.

While this played a role in decision, it was the price of gold that was the threat to Washington.

Trump wanted conflict with China to stop the rise of China in 2020-2024. China in such a scenario would dump trillions in treasuries causing yields to spike. My guess is the Fed would step in and buy treasuries to manipulate the market. And Trump would follow through in a conflict with China.

https://www.benzinga.com/25/04/44729...c-for-reversal

Though a really interesting article. If Precious metals and bond investors were working together, it is a adamant chain that can't be broken easily.

Yield rate increases would cause pause because of the desire for rate cuts, though the fed buying treasuries solves the problem in the long term if the international public lets them get away with such manipulation.

After morning stock market swings with gains and losses to try to spook the treasury markets to buy and precious metals markets to sell, failing both ways, the market manipulators decided to have an market profitable day to pretend and try to fool the investors that anything is ok.

The agenda with the bond market is to have the media and public view that as the resistance to Washington.

The bond market is and can be totally manipulated:

The Federal Reserve has purchased U.S. Treasuries as part of its monetary policy operations, particularly during periods of economic stress or to provide liquidity. Here are the key instances of large-scale Treasury purchases (Quantitative Easing, or QE) and their approximate amounts:
1. Global Financial Crisis (2008–2014) – QE1, QE2, QE3

QE1 (Nov 2008 – Mar 2010): 1.25trillion in Treasuries (part of a larger 1.25trillion in Treasuries (part of a larger 1.75 trillion program including MBS).

QE2 (Nov 2010 – Jun 2011): $600 billion in Treasuries.

Operation Twist (2011–2012): Sold short-term Treasuries and bought long-term ones (~$400 billion).

QE3 (Sep 2012 – Oct 2014): Open-ended purchases, totaling ~$790 billion in Treasuries.

2. COVID-19 Pandemic Response (2020–2022)

March 2020 – Early 2022: The Fed bought ~3.3 trillion in Treasuries as part of emergency stimulus, bringing its total holdings to over 3.3 trillion in Treasuries as part of emergency stimulus, bringing its total holdings to over 5.7 trillion by mid-2022.

3. Recent Adjustments (2022–Present)

Quantitative Tightening (QT): Since June 2022, the Fed has been reducing its Treasury holdings by allowing them to mature without full reinvestment (currently up to $60 billion per month).

Total Fed Treasury Holdings Over Time

Pre-2008: Less than $800 billion.

Post-QE (2014): ~$2.5 trillion.

Post-COVID (2022 peak): ~$5.7 trillion.

Current (2024): ~$4.7 trillion (due to QT).

The Trump goal is to flood the market with new additional oil production for lower oil inflation. Hammer metals with usual suspect manipulation. Keep the bond market down, and if needed, have the Federal Reserve buy treasuries. Then bully nations to trade parity. With trade parity, then possibly back the dollar with bitcoin.

The American Masonic Empire wants economic warfare with nations around the globe without consequences, as the Masonic Zionist Empire cries fake victimhood. The American Empire cries out in pain as it wages economic warfare on your nation. GIM1ers knew the free trade was used to defend the dollar in two ways: get nations to trade valuable goods for worthless dollars, export dollars to flood the globe with worthless dollars tradable for valuable goods. import deflation with low priced cheap Chinese goods to defend the dollar from inflation. The deep state has hyperdeflationary bitcoin to replace/back the fiat dollar. No longer threatened by gold and silver, free trade is no longer an asset to the American Masonic Empire. Before going to fixed supply bitcoin, you can have trade deficits or else the bitcoin leaves your economy. Trump is preparing America for a bitcoin economy.

The war has been against gold and silver and Trump is part of that war.

The federal reserve has waited to lower interest rates because they want to fight inflation during these trade arm twisting. The US can't be seen as losing vs stagflation.

That is why Trump chimped out when the ECB lowered interest rates, it breaks rank and helps Europe resist in their US relations.

The attacks on the Powell decisions are fake victimhood by attacker and for Powell.

The new Washington strategy is for the focus to be on bitcoin outperforming precious metals. The price of bitcoin is totally manipulated, it goes down for a distraction or when there is a rout of the deep state. Increases for a variety of reasons from Washington agenda of defeating rivals and for getting the focus off precious metals as when the fed was lowering interest rates and Washington wanted investors to focus the anti-dollar play and hedge against inflation to be bitcoin, not gold and silver. So bitcoin gains is the latter. It is the loser Washington game of you believe precious metals are gaining and doing great, look at the price of bitcoin. The deep state wants bitcoin to be the anti-federal reserve investment based on lies and manipulation.

If gold and silver win gold goes to 50K or more and silver over 1K. If Washington backs the dollar with bitcoin, worthless bitcoin with no intrinsic value could be 100 million per bitcoin.

The Trump family is completely into defeating gold and silver and completely into bitcoin as the mark of the beast global currency:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=eri...itcoin+&ia=web

MAGA is total fake populism.

Depending on how many cave to Trump around the globe could determine if bitcoin is imposed as "money" backing the dollar. Turning the US into a Russian gulag (the successor to the Patriot Act) and imposition of bitcoin (also a bush cia project from the Bush years) as "money" are two agenda of Trump. Trump is a neocon.

The 2017-2021 agenda for Trump was stop the rise of China, which is why the cia and DoD released COVID (since COVID was a plandemic, and planned released, why would China deliberately release a pandemic in China for the globe to hate China and blame China, it is exactly what Trump would want. Meaning China was not in on the release. Both China and the US had researched the SARS-2 cornavirus, meaning it was released by the US side. Fauci's role was not only to take the blame as leader of the response, Fauci set China with a similar SARS-2 virus to frame China for Washington. Fauci was working for Trump the whole event. To take the blame for the globalist side, when Trump is a neocon). That agenda crashed and burned because of voters. Trump and cronies are chimping out over the price of gold and silver and want bitcoin to replace gold and silver in the US. Hence the bitcoin/crypto reserve established by the evil side.

The market chimped out yesterday because it wants rate cuts. As I called it months ago, the reserve plunge protection team. Washington wants down markets causing oil and other inflation indicators to also go down due to the market going down to get rate cuts. It is 100% manipulation.

The new agenda of today is to have bitcoin increase to draw attention away from gold and silver. bitcoin increases as wall street gains, can't sell the market the whole week, so the worthless distraction is bitcoin, as bitcoin is inherently worthless.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by C.Martel

The market chimped out yesterday because it wants rate cuts. As I called it months ago, the reserve plunge protection team. Washington wants down markets causing oil and other inflation indicators to also go down due to the market going down to get rate cuts. It is 100% manipulation.

---

BTW, I am not inventing these ideas. These are glaringly obvious.

Trump warns of economic slowdown unless Fed cuts rates, triggering selloff

https://www.reuters.com/business/tru...es-2025-04-21/

Powell is concerned with the idea that if the fed cuts rates too soon before a recession slows inflation, that the rate cuts would worsen inflation and if the economy goes into a recession, that is stagflation.

bitcoin can increase, according to the market manipulators for bitcoin, to 200K or 300K, and no questions if worthless bitcoin is overbought because the agenda is a 100 million bitcoin backing the dollar.

However once gold goes to 3500, questions of greed and overbought.

No media is telling investors gold is actual wealth. While bitcoin is inherently worthless. 6 billion adults around the globe and 6 billion adults can use an app (if developed) to invent their own identical bitcoin cryptocurrency. Now name the bitcoin that is worth over a trillion in market cap. out of those potential 6 billion and one The one based on hype, manipulation and lies. The one invented by the cia. The one supported by the banksters. The one promoted by the corporate financial media. The one the government has a reserve of. The one big tech is behind.

https://www.ccn.com/4-reasons-to-bel...eated-bitcoin/

While the causes of the market volatility is partly due to investors reacting to the latest market manipulation in the news.

The market volatility of one day increase of 1000 points to the next losses of 900 points has a goal of market confusion and a tactic against inflation as commodity investors don't know how to make money.

Washington wants rate cuts, to get those inflation has to be in check. Wide swings of markets is another chimp out to punish commodity investors.

Trade/economic deals started with staged masonic and jewish deals - Ukraine mineral deal, then freemason UK trade deal. If you want to make money at the State Fair and have a product to sell, have your family pretend to be interested customers and be the shills to make it appear your product is in demand and have them talk about how great what you are selling is. It get the hype you need to get dupes to buy your product.

Then the China deal, because China is run by Jews that hate Europe and support the Chabad in Russia. After that the cia and mi6 assets in the Middle East do trade deals.

The more bitcoin and Trump have victories, the lower gold momentum goes. Thus verifying that Trumpstein is deepstate. Trump wants the gilded age without the gold and silver as money. Trump pushes the US crypto reserve instead of gold and silver as money. A total banker move.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by C.Martel

The bond market is and can be totally manipulated:

The Federal Reserve has purchased U.S. Treasuries as part of its monetary policy operations, particularly during periods of economic stress or to provide liquidity. Here are the key instances of large-scale Treasury purchases (Quantitative Easing, or QE) and their approximate amounts:
1. Global Financial Crisis (2008–2014) – QE1, QE2, QE3

QE1 (Nov 2008 – Mar 2010): 1.25trillion in Treasuries (part of a larger 1.25trillion in Treasuries (part of a larger 1.75 trillion program including MBS).

QE2 (Nov 2010 – Jun 2011): $600 billion in Treasuries.

Operation Twist (2011–2012): Sold short-term Treasuries and bought long-term ones (~$400 billion).

QE3 (Sep 2012 – Oct 2014): Open-ended purchases, totaling ~$790 billion in Treasuries.

2. COVID-19 Pandemic Response (2020–2022)

March 2020 – Early 2022: The Fed bought ~3.3 trillion in Treasuries as part of emergency stimulus, bringing its total holdings to over 3.3 trillion in Treasuries as part of emergency stimulus, bringing its total holdings to over 5.7 trillion by mid-2022.

3. Recent Adjustments (2022–Present)

Quantitative Tightening (QT): Since June 2022, the Fed has been reducing its Treasury holdings by allowing them to mature without full reinvestment (currently up to $60 billion per month).

Total Fed Treasury Holdings Over Time

Pre-2008: Less than $800 billion.

Post-QE (2014): ~$2.5 trillion.

Post-COVID (2022 peak): ~$5.7 trillion.

Current (2024): ~$4.7 trillion (due to QT).

The Trump goal is to flood the market with new additional oil production for lower oil inflation. Hammer metals with usual suspect manipulation. Keep the bond market down, and if needed, have the Federal Reserve buy treasuries. Then bully nations to trade parity. With trade parity, then possibly back the dollar with bitcoin.

The American Masonic Empire wants economic warfare with nations around the globe without consequences, as the Masonic Zionist Empire cries fake victimhood. The American Empire cries out in pain as it wages economic warfare on your nation. GIM1ers knew the free trade was used to defend the dollar in two ways: get nations to trade valuable goods for worthless dollars, export dollars to flood the globe with worthless dollars tradable for valuable goods. import deflation with low priced cheap Chinese goods to defend the dollar from inflation. The deep state has hyperdeflationary bitcoin to replace/back the fiat dollar. No longer threatened by gold and silver, free trade is no longer an asset to the American Masonic Empire. Before going to fixed supply bitcoin, you can have trade deficits or else the bitcoin leaves your economy. Trump is preparing America for a bitcoin economy.

The war has been against gold and silver and Trump is part of that war.

---

This is completely unverified by the major financial media:

Why is the Fed quietly buying billions in bonds — and hoping nobody notices?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wh...1097.2-1105.14

Not sure if the Fed buying treasuries has started.

Trade court strikes down trump tariffs

This is what you get when you don't have partisan maga hacks as "judges", it goes off script. Off script of cia, masons and Jews.

The ftse stock market from the city of London was trading down when the EU markets were higher. This is very telling.

The script was the Masonic uk makes the first major trade deal with trump to "normalize" this. Then to get Masonic America rivals china and EU to then cave and make the deal with trump.

So the UK city of London stock exchange down shows this judge was not doing this according to script. The script was tariffs and trade wars and nations following the actions of Masonic UK in kowtowing to Masonic America.

Ending the tariffs prematurely harms the Jew and Masonic agenda.

Gold went down overnight due to a subsiding of long positions from trade war fears. If you want to see gold go down significantly in the many hundreds, then have nations lose the trade war.

Gold and silver did not nose dive after Trump-China tariffs deal.

The reason...

The market manipulators had an Iran War planned.

Trump employs the UK and France to play the "gud cop" to the "bad cop" of the US, and Iran falls for it. Iran says it is open to diplomacy if Israel stops attacks.

Iranian foreign minister tells Witkoff no return to table on nuclear issue as long as Israeli strikes ongoing, in most substantive contacts yet between Washington and Tehran

https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-h...f-attacks-end/

This sent gold, silver and oil down. Maybe the Iranians are as controllable and stupid as the Chinese. The Chinese would sell their grandmothers for 50 cents. The question after would Europe fall for the psy-ops. After Europe there is no resistance among the nations to a bitcoin economy.

There are three major crisis for 2025.

Tariff/Trade War Crisis
Iran War Crisis
Budget Bill Debt Crisis

Tariff trade war if it goes poorly for Trump, gold and silver go up and stocks can take a hit. If the US Empire is not successful, bitcoin goes down.

The next crisis was the Iran War. War spikes oil and gold valuations. A Iranian capitulation means US wins and markets go up, oil goes down, gold goes down and bitcoin increases for the US masonic empire winning over Iran.

The last crisis is the debt budget bill. This weakens the dollar, helps market valuation, increases inflation, and help bitcoin because if the dollar collapses, the masonic goal in Jan 2025 was to go to bitcoin to back the dollar.

I figured out why Washington faked the labor market in May and June.

The fake numbers were to give backing to the trade negotiations that the US was in ok shape and the foreign nation needed the US more than the US needed the foreign nation.

Then when the news is for the federal reserve to cut interest rates, more closer to real numbers are revised and released showing a bad labor market for the summer.

It was manipulation on the trade side, then manipulation on the interest rate side. Both instances of numbers to help the Washington agenda of either trade deals or fed rate cuts.

How China/Trump won the trade war with China:

How Trump beat China in the trade war.

China knows that gold and silver rises in price put pressure on the dollar as monetized gold and silver rival the dollar.

So the US called China's bluff, the US served the entire head of the US financial system ready to be decapitated by China. The US got the basis trades highly leveraged bet to win spectacularly if China obeyed Washington and proved China was bluffing on gold and silver. THE LBMA was close to running out of supplies of silver, that would have cause US interest rates to spike and commodities to spike forcing Trump to admit defeat in the trade war. Though this would have taken down the stock market with the losses and caused a financial crisis from the basis trading and other leveraged bets against treasury rate hikes and commodities. China would have beaten the Western bankers and the US, if China did not send the LBMA hundreds of tons of silver to extend liquidity. China sent it after the US warned China it could cost China more than a billion 50 cents if the global economy collapsed (China does not want to defeat the US, only cares about the next 50 cents it makes).

When China stopped importing precious metal from the West and rather sent it to London, the entire precious metal market collapsed. China back stabbed retail investors to be part of team Trump.
Tons of silver from US, China ease London spot market squeeze
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/...ze-2025-10-20/

So the US told China the Chinese were the hero for saving from a financial meltdown and Great Depression 2.0.

Then during the trade negotiations, the US said we called your bluff, you won't use gold and silver against the US, China is a team player and as a team player, China has no cards because they have no gold and silver cards. China did not call the US bluff on collapsing the system by China buying more metal.

If China called the US bluff, the US economy would have tanked, with stagflation.

If China collapsed the global economy by not rescuing the LBMA, China would have owned the global economy as the global economy would need cheap Chinese goods to recover from the stagflation.

I believe Trump has much to thank the Chinese for capitulating. China does not want to use gold and silver to collapse the dollar. Too many 50 cents (China is the nation to sell you out for 50 cents - called it years ago) to be made on Team Trump.

This issue was destroying Trump politically with farmers, then China capitulates:
China to Buy 12 Million Metric Tons of Soybeans This Season, Bessent Says​
https://www.agweb.com/news/crops/soy...n-bessent-says

China also capitulated here too:
China’s Year-Long Rare Earths Truce Offers Near-Term Relief​
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...sed-for-a-year

Trump did not care about the 100% tariff on China, Trump cared about China capitulating. And China did and Trump got the win vs China.

China is on team Trump and thus won their own trade war by joining team America.

"I want the US military to bomb Venezuela, bomb Venezuela for oil. That is my oil. I can sell it for bitcoin and make trillions of trillions of dollars from that. Bankers are my friends. The Military Industrial Complex is my friend."

Why we did want a dollar collapse in 2008 is because the replacement was constitutional money gold and silver.

Why we don't want a dollar collapse is trump is gonna go to bitcoin. Perhaps the psyop on maybe look if ft Knox has gold, maybe don't look, maybe do look, nonsense psyop of no action could have been the primer or predictive programming to prepare the public for the cosplay administration to find no or less gold in the vaults, and therefore "have to have bitcoin as money". We got no gold or too little gold

We want shortages and gold (and silver) as the only monetary store of value, not banksters crypto bitcoin.

Maga is culture wars and bitcoin.

The Jewish/masonic cabal wins with the culture wars. The Jewish/masonic cabal wins with bitcoins. The Jewish/Masonic cabal loses with gold and silver as money. Pro-bitcoin Soros wants the public fixated on culture wars, so there is never 100% dedication to gold and silver defeating the banksters as there was with the Ron Paul movement. The Ron Paul movement never raged against the gays. Never got distracted by the Jewish and masonic culture war diversion.

The news about ZOG trumpstein vs the Fed are fake. The bankers lost control of the price of gold and silver and are looking for a replacement to fiat. Expect bitcoin to be rolled out this year or next year.

Powell is the scapegoat, the new Fauci for the bankers to have the populists hate. So then the public accept the new trumpstein agenda of bitcoin as money.

This is the last chance of gold and silver replacing the federal reserve, before bitcoin replaces the fed fiat FRNs. Market manipulators want a dollar collapse before gold and silver are parabolic. Biden and Harris would not have gone to crypto, that is the main mission of Trumpstein.

The FRN empire is imploding, so the cia needs the narrative at Faux News to be anti-fed so that not gold and silver replace the fiat dollars, the faux news watchers hate the fed and accept bitcoin as money.

The short term news story is to have the cia media give a reason for silvers rise, the fed. It is the fed.

A lot of YouTube chatter on a looming crisis. Collapse to be blamed on precious metal squeezes, tariff decisions, China, and deadbeats leeching off of society, immigrants.

Transfer of wealth. Tokenization and crypto as the cosplay government solution.

Is 2026 the year for this.?

The board is set for this. Silver squeeze would cause it. The system has been prepared for a collapse. It was also in 2025, except china decided to bail out the lme with enough silver to keep the system operating.

You see players need to sell out the good side against the bankers to prevent collapse. It is planned to have a collapse lead to tokenization/crypto as money. And no collapse lead to a stronger system for the bankers to force tokenization and crypto with no collapse.

The silver squeeze had to happen in October 2025, then china betrayed resistance against the bankers.

Then the squeeze had to happen January 30th. China watched as investors got burned.

The squeeze has to happen by the end of March. Last opportunity before it is too late.

Epstein. Wars. Conflicts. Immigrants. Are the distraction to the most important war on silver and gold. It is under your nose. The endgame of crypto and a big tech global disorder.

trump is on the side of the bankers.

Any opportunity of gold and silver to increase drastically is preceded by massive bets and shorts telling china that china would collapse the system if China bets on gold and silver. So china bails out the bankers and bankers make trillions. That war chest is used for more banker schemes for more total control, the newest worse than the previous with more sellouts and stronger banker positions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by C.Martel

The short term news story is to have the cia media give a reason for silvers rise, the fed. It is the fed.

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Called it, trump used nomination process of fed to collapse silver by over 40%.

Train the market to believe the only news is the fed and manipulate the markets on the staged news.

When banksters lose control of demand, change topics to the fed, staged the entire script and used the staged script to crash paper silver.

The agenda of "sell dollars, dollars are collapsing" is to back dollars with bitcoin reserve and have those that bet against the dollar to look like idiots.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by C.Martel

The squeeze has to happen by the end of March. Last opportunity before it is too late.

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Banksters gave silver investors at least three more years to defeat the CRIMEX.

CRIMEX admits defeat, then...

CME Halts Metals Trading — Again — Two Days Before First Notice Day
The Silver Academy
Feb 25, 2026

by Niko Moretti (disclaimer, we have not had time to double check all the metrics in this article, will do this editing on ongoing basis)
Another “Technical Issue.” Another Convenient Coincidence.

On Wednesday, February 25, 2026 — precisely 48 hours before March First Notice Day — CME Group halted all metals and natural gas futures and options trading on its Globex platform. CME’s Global Command Center first acknowledged the issue at 12:11 CT, and by 12:15 CT the exchange confirmed a full halt. Natural gas was quietly restarted by 12:50 CT, but metals — the category where the real pressure exists — remained dark with no timeline for resumption.

All day orders and good-till-date (GTD) orders placed for Wednesday were canceled. Only good-till-canceled (GTC) orders with prior confirmations survived the purge. CME’s official explanation: “technical issues.” No further detail. No elaboration. Just a status page that reads “Investigating”.

Anyone paying attention to the silver market knows the timing here is not random.
Déjà Vu: The November 2025 “Cooling Crisis”

This is not the first time CME’s infrastructure has conveniently failed at a sensitive moment. On November 27–28, 2025, CME Group suffered a catastrophic 10-hour outage that froze trillions of dollars in derivatives trading globally. The official cause: a cooling system failure at the CyrusOne CHI1 data center in Aurora, Illinois — a facility CME sold to CyrusOne in 2016 and then rented back.

Internal temperatures at the data center surged past 100°F despite freezing weather outside. CyrusOne later admitted in a December 6, 2025 statement to Bloomberg that the outage was caused by human error — onsite staff and contractors failed to follow standard procedures for draining cooling towers ahead of freezing temperatures. The cascade began at 3:40 AM CT on November 27, a full day before Globex went dark, meaning there was ample warning that was either ignored or mismanaged.

CME had a backup data center in New York ready to assume the load, but chose not to activate it because the exchange believed the outage would be brief. It lasted over ten hours. Analysts called it “a case study in how a single physical failure inside a data center can escalate into a global market disruption when governance, failover logic, and environmental engineering are not aligned”.

CyrusOne subsequently bolstered its backup cooling capacity. Evidently, not enough to prevent today’s fresh halt from raising the same uncomfortable questions.​
The Shanghai Price Gap: Silver at $102 in the East, $91 in the West

While CME metals sit frozen today, physical reality continues to assert itself in Asia. Silver on the Shanghai Futures Exchange reopened after the Lunar New Year holiday and immediately surged to approximately $102 per troy ounce — a roughly 16% premium over the Western spot price. Meanwhile, Western spot silver trades around $90.96 as of this morning, up 4.19% on the day. The gold/silver ratio has compressed to 57.06.​​

The Shanghai morning reference price for SMM #1 Silver was 8,041 yuan/kg, with spot premiums difficult to transact because downstream buyers are cautious at these elevated levels. Yet the premium persists. Shanghai silver inventories have fallen to just 318 tons, and the Shanghai Futures Exchange has already restricted approximately 23 accounts in February alone for exceeding intraday position limits — a sign regulators see the squeeze unfolding in real time.​

When physical silver costs 16% more in the world’s largest consuming nation than it does on a Western exchange that is currently not even operational, the paper pricing system is broadcasting its own irrelevance.
Why the Shorts Are in a Perilous Trap

Margin pressure hits both sides, but the structure of this market makes the short side uniquely dangerous right now.
Inventory Is Historically Tight

COMEX registered silver — the category actually deliverable against futures — sits at approximately 88 million ounces, while total exchange inventory is around 366 million ounces, with the remainder classified as “eligible” but not formally pledged to delivery. Registered stocks have fallen sharply from higher levels seen just months ago — down from roughly 346 million ounces in 2020, a drawdown of approximately 75% over five years. The depletion rate has been running at roughly 20 million ounces per month.
Paper Claims Dwarf Physical Metal

Recent data show open interest equivalent to roughly 240 million ounces, meaning paper claims exist for nearly three times the registered, deliverable silver. Some estimates place March contract commitments at over 400 million ounces against just 88 million registered. The coverage ratio — registered metal divided by open-interest ounces — sits near 0.14, historically lean.
Margin Hikes Are Forcing a Game of Musical Chairs

With an 18% margin on a rising price, shorts must devote increasing amounts of cash just to keep positions open. Well-capitalized bullion banks and producers who actually hold metal can manage this. Naked shorts — those who sold futures without owning silver — are trapped between two bad choices:

Rush to buy back contracts, driving the price even higher, or

Attempt to source physical metal in a market where registered supply is thin and being drawn down daily

Price Action Signals Short-Side Stress

After the February 6 margin hike and a violent correction from above $120 down toward the $70s, silver has rebounded from $77.18 on February 18 back toward $90.96 as of this morning — a gain of over 17% in one week. That kind of V-shaped rebound, in the face of higher margin requirements, is a classic signal that forced short covering — not carefree selling — is dominating the tape.​
The Pattern No One Is Allowed to Say Out Loud

Consider the sequence:

Silver surges past $120 and physical delivery demand reaches unprecedented levels — January 30 crash from $121 to $64, a 47% drop in hours, widely attributed to CME hiking margin requirements.​

Physical metal continues leaving COMEX vaults anyway — 3.3 million ounces withdrawn even on the day of the crash.​

Silver rebounds sharply despite the margin hike, climbing back toward $91 by late February.​​

Shanghai reopens at $102, exposing a 16% premium over Western paper pricing.​

CME halts metals trading 48 hours before First Notice Day — the exact moment when delivery demands would be filed.

JPMorgan and several large U.S. banks are widely reported to still hold significant short positions in silver. The market broadly believes these institutions suppress prices in the paper market to create conditions for accumulating physical metal on the cheap. Total COMEX silver deliveries doubled from 203 million ounces in 2024 to 474 million ounces in 2025, and the February 2026 delivery rate is running at 98% — nearly all contract holders demanding physical metal.

London silver lease rates spiked to 34.9%, with intraday peaks of 39%, indicating extreme desperation for borrowable physical silver. SLV implied volatility sits at 99–103% annualized against a 37% historical realized rate.​​
What Happens Next

March First Notice Day is February 27 — two days away. The arithmetic is straightforward: there is far more paper silver than physical silver, and every day that passes sees more metal leaving the vaults. CME’s “technical issue” today — whatever its true cause — buys time. Whether that time benefits the shorts, the exchange, or both, is the question the market is no longer politely ignoring.​​

The world’s largest derivatives exchange cannot seem to keep the lights on when silver gets interesting. Once is a cooling malfunction. Twice starts to look like a feature, not a bug.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-189173274

Keep buying if you want to pressure the banksters. The morons that say there are no shortages and that the banksters want high silver prices are joked. Banksters own silver to sell silver and crash it at a later opportunity. Banksters are not for gold is money, silver is money.

These shut downs of the CRIMEX and GLOBEX trading are part of the demand destruction. So if investors run, more demand destruction. Though industrial demand is the most important, giving silver a possible floor if supply meets demand.