VIDEO - Ed Steer: If You’re Going to Invest in Silver, Do it Now

Ed Steer has written and spoken extensively about silver market manipulation, and at the recent International Mining Investment Conference he shared an update on what’s happening right now.

Steer, who runs Gold and Silver Digest and is a GATA board member, explained that not much has changed since his last interview with the Investing News Network (INN) in January.

“JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) is still running the COMEX futures market in the precious metals, silver in particular, and Scotiabank, which was always a big player up until then, has died off to nothing,” he said.

According to Steer, investors won’t see the silver price move higher until JPMorgan allows it to do so. While that may sound bleak, there is still hope — he believes that a major market event will push JPMorgan’s hand, and he sees that event happening in the near future.

“This event is close, if not imminent,” he said. “I don’t want to put a tight date on it, I’d be foolish to put a date on it, but I can tell you right now that I’m pretty sure it’ll be this year, and probably before summer’s over. That’s my guess, but don’t hold me to it.”

Watch the interview above for more insight on silver from Steer. The transcript is available below.

INN: We’re catching up right now, we last spoke in January. Can you give me a quick update on what’s happened to the silver market since then?

ES: Since January. Well, I’ll tell you right now not much has changed. JPMorgan is still running the COMEX futures market in the precious metals, silver in particular, and Scotiabank, which was always a big player up until then, has died off to nothing because they ended up losing a whole bunch of money. Now they’re trying to get out of the silver and gold business.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) looked at them and said, “thank you, but no thanks, you’re a guaranteed 100-percent loss if we buy you,” so now Scotiabank is stuck with them. Other than that, JPMorgan still controls the field in the precious metals, so in that respect nothing has changed.

INN: A quick recap for those who don’t know about these names and these players. What is going on with silver market manipulation?

ES: Commodity prices are controlled. The big six commodities are controlled by basically eight traders, with JPMorgan being the lead trader. As long as you control the price of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper and crude oil, you can control, with some exceptions obviously, control the entire commodities complex. And that prevents people from seeing the fact that inflation is going on and they stay invested in Wall Street and things like that.

They’ve been doing this now for a couple of generations, since we went off the gold standard in 1971, and that’s their job. But I can tell you right now to put a little optimism into this, I think this price management scheme is really getting a little long in the tooth, and the signs are out there that this thing at some point, whether it be this week, next week, next month, is going to come to an end.

INN: Yes, that’s the big question — I think for a lot of commodities and especially for this, the question is “when?” Do you have any insight on when or what we will see as we approach that “when” time.

ES: It’s up to JPMorgan. Jamie Dimon is not going to tell us in advance, but as I’ve said before, I think that when this finally does end, it will end with some geopolitical, economic, financial, monetary event that coincides with that. Because this won’t happen in a news vacuum, it will happen when something extraordinary is going on in the world. And at that point, whenever that comes — I don’t know, like I said, we’ve got all kinds of geopolitical events going on in the world right now.

INN: There is potential.

ES: Economic, financial, monetary, you name it, there is a flock of black swans out there that can just blow up — one or multiple ones. This could happen in the next week or next month, but I can tell you right now, we will get the warning sign. But by the time you see the warning sign it will be too late to do anything because I would guess that when they let this thing go, it’ll happen when North America is asleep at night and the commodity markets in the US and the stock markets in the US and Europe are closed. That would be my guess how it is going to end.

INN: In your presentation you gave some numbers on the short positions that these big players hold in the different commodities. Can you explain what that looks like and what the consequences could be for all of these metals once this happens?

ES: As I explained … the short position silver is so extreme. Right now, there’s the big eight traders … they’re short six months’ worth of silver production. And if you look at crude oil, the big eight traders are short seven days, seven days vs. 180 days.

If you took the short position in silver and transported it down and stuck it on the price of crude oil, I wouldn’t even want to think of what the price of crude oil would be, it would be somewhere under $1, or under $3 or something like that. I can tell you the CFTC would move immediately to correct that. But right now with the short positions in silver and also of course in the other four precious metals, once they’re removed or once they’re brought down, you’re going to see prices of not only gold and silver go higher, but all the commodities as well.

INN: You’ve said many times before that silver will not move until the big traders say “go.”

ES: Yes, mainly JPMorgan.

INN: Mainly JPMorgan. I’m going to ask you anyway where we may see silver this year? Will we just then be flat for the rest of 2018?

ES: You’re asking me the same question you asked before, the date. I don’t know exactly what date, but I just get the feeling from what’s happening out there, with what’s going on in SLV, all the silver being accumulated by various parties here and the amount of gold, the short position being paid down. All kinds of things going on with the silver depositories so that this event is close, if not imminent. I don’t want to put a tight date on it, I’d be foolish to put a date on it, but I can tell you right now that I’m pretty sure it’ll be this year and probably before summer’s over. That’s my guess, but don’t hold me to it.

INN: You’ve spoken before about the need to be ready before this happens. When do you buy silver? How do you get ready for this as an investor?

ES: Well, that is a very good question. And to all your viewers out there, I’ve been 100-percent invested in precious metals since 2002, so let’s see, that’s 16 years? I’ve done okay, but then I gave a bunch of it back when silver and gold were taken back down in 2011. If I was a newbie out there, or sitting on the fence or whatever, I would not wait any longer than I absolutely had to. I would rather, as I said in my speech, or to the gentlemen I was just talking to over here two minutes ago, I’d rather be five years early than five days late because I can tell you that if you’re not in before it happens, you’re never going to get in. So if you’re going to make the investment, do it now.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

Editorial Disclosure: The Investing News Network does not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the information reported in contributed article. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not reflect the opinions of the Investing News Network and do not constitute investment advice. All readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence.