"Sophisticated" investors have been led to believe that SLV is a de facto investment in silver. And now we know that SLV is an "investment" in...
by Dave Kranzler of Investment Research Dynamics
Those of us who read the original filings for both GLD and SLV were shocked that the Prospectus for each was certified by the SEC. The legal loopholes embedded in the legalese were wide enough to drive a fleet of Class-8 trucks through lined-up side-by-side. For just one example out of many, see this for instance: Can We Trust The Silver ETF.
It's been suspected by many truth-seekers since the respective inception of GLD and SLV that each Trust was set-up as a mechanism to divert institutional cash flows into the respective Trusts that might otherwise flow in actual physical gold and silver.
As has been verified by recent actions taken by the SLV sponsor, BlackRock, these trusts are nothing more than gold and silver derivatives and thus are embedded with the same risks as investing in futures and options. In the end-game, most investors in GLD and SLV will end up losing most, if not all, of their "investment" in these fraud-riddled securities.
Through the meticulous sleuthing of BullionStar's Ronan Manly, it was revealed that SLV stealthily slipped into the the SLV prospectus "cover your ass" language that acknowledged that the shares were not fully-backed by silver bars:
"The demand for silver may temporarily exceed available supply that is acceptable for delivery to the Trust, which may adversely affect an investment in the Shares.
To the extent that demand for silver exceeds the available supply at that time, Authorized Participants may not be able to readily acquire sufficient amounts of silver necessary for the creation of a Basket." (see page 7: SLV amended Prospectus as of February 5, 2021)
Notwithstanding all of the other issues with this disclosure in particular, and the entire set-up of the Trust generally, that particular disclosure - furtively slipped into the the Prospectus - reveals the extent to which SLV is not in any way an investment in silver or an investment in a security that indexes the price movement of silver. Rather, SLV is a rat's nest of fraud and deception - a covert tool used in the Central Banking and bullion banking effort to control the price of silver (just like GLD).
That disclosure alone reveals the extent to which an effort is being made by the big banks - backed by the Central Banks - to prevent bona fide price discovery in the precious metals market.
The sponsor of SLV is, at best, disingenuous in its effort to manage SLV properly. If Black Rock were to issue an offer-wanted-in-comp for the amount of silver bars that it needs to back the new shares created, at a high enough price it would be able to purchase enough silver. This is how price discovery is supposed to work. SLV's failure to embark on this price discovery exercise therefore reveals that the Trust is a total fraud.
When I traded junk bonds and we needed to find where offers in scarce bonds would come out, we would either start bidding up the price in "the Street" until offers appeared or we would issue an "offer-in-comp wanted" to accounts that held that bonds in order to draw out offers. At the very least we would be able to "discover" the real offer price for the bonds we needed.
Eventually the price containment of gold and silver will fail under its own weight. The Law of Supply and Demand dictates that imbalances in supply and demand can be fixed by price. In this case the price of silver needs to rise to a level that balances out the supply and demand for SLV shares - if SLV is truly a physical silver Trust. As such, SLV technically should be soliciting large offers-in-comp. That disclosure above - under no uncertain terms - reveals for all to see that the market price of silver is too low - that demand exceeds supply by a considerable amount.
The solution to this economic problem is for the sponsor of SLV to bid up the price of physical silver to a level that solicits enough offers to fulfill the obligation of the Trust to back the share baskets with the appropriate amount of silver bars. Anything short of this reveals SLV to be a fraud. After all, "sophisticated" investors in SLV have been led to believe that SLV is a de facto investment in silver. And now we know that SLV is an "investment" in paper securities fractionally backed by silver bars. In technical parlance, SLV is a derivative, and a fraudulent one at that.