Nowadays everybody has to learn to do more with less. For reasons I’m not smart enough to understand, the SLV is becoming a shining example of that old adage. Since its inception in 2006, the SLV has traded more than 100 million shares exactly 10 times, 9 of which occurred consecutively (April 25, 2011 – May 5, 2011 (today)). In fact today was all-time, #1 volume day for the SLV (295mm). So no doubt the SLV is doing more. What’s utterly amazing is they are doing all this crazy volume 33 million shares less (and ounces of silver) than they had just 7 trading days ago. So in the last 9 trading days, trading has totaled more than 4 times the number of shares currently in existence.
Now that’s doing more with less!
SLV shares outstanding chart from Stockrageous.com , they also have historic shares outstanding data available for download.
Even mighty Apple at its mo-mo-mo-iest never came close to this kind of volume relative to shares outstanding. In October 2008, AAPL traded 160% of its outstanding shares for the entire month. At the present pace, SLV will trade well over 1000% of its shares outstanding in May. Un-believable. Maybe Blackrock’s Kevin Feldman would like to write another letter explaining to all us conspiracy theorists how the world’s larget ETF is 97.5% backed by silver, and how more trading volume = less silver held in trust. Maybe Kevin would also like to explain exactly when Blackrock decided to deviate from its 2009 SLV prospectus…..
(Screen capture from 2009 SLV prospectus)
Fun Facts: Despite having exceeded the 264.5 million ounce limit in 2009, JP Morgan is still the sole custodian of SLV. As of this writing, JPM still has exactly zero ounces of registered silver in its COMEX vault.
Maybe Kevin would like to retract that statement about “protecting shareholders interests” now, or maybe he would like to publicly thank Jamie Dimon for holding even more silver than the trust intended him to be responsible for.
Selloff, what selloff?
I think it rains because I left my sun roof open, but I don’t go on national television declaring that to be the case. Saying that the CMEs recent margin hikes are responsible for the plunge in silver is supported by even less evidence (open interest in the July futures contract has risen by 50% since April 20). Furthermore, would somebody please explain to CNBC’s Bob Pistrami that there hasn’t been a selloff in the SLV, and even if there had been, it would have zero impact on the price of silver. Now if Bob wanted to report that 33 million ounces of silver vanished from the trust for no apparent reason, that would be accurate reporting. If you look at the COMEX report, you’ll see that there’s not much going on there, but once again, JPMs “customer” is the preeminent seller of silver. Keep in mind, they were buyers a couple weeks back at higher prices. Buy high, sell low. That would be even funnier if I didn’t believe the US taxpayer was subsidizing this trade.
Recap: More volume = fewer shares; Tighter supply = lower prices.
Kidding aside, the time to capture criminals is when the crime is in progress, and if you’ve ever wondered what “yellow journalism” looks like, turn on CNBC today.