Rocket Fuel

According to silver analyst Theodore Butler, various hedge funds are currently short 440 million ounces of silver on the COMEX futures market. That’s over half the silver that’s mined in a year. These funds manage money for big investors and they rely on computerized trading programs. Human judgements and emotions don’t enter into trading decisions. Their foremost trading strategy is to buy or sell when moving averages are penetrated. If the price of silver or gold moves upward to the point it goes through the average of prices over the past 50 days, it causes some short selling programs to buy and close out their short position. A penetration of the more important 200 day moving average sparks major buying and can lift the price significantly.