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Is gold vulnerable to the same slap down that silver got?

Nope......well er.....not likely

Gold can take a hit....but not as bad or quick as it's thinly traded counterpart Ag.

Silver's huge surge was due to short covering, not speculation. When the shorts were finished closing out their positions, there were a lot fewer buyers, and so the price plunged. Did the margin hikes have much to do with the plunge, given that speculation (the target of margin hikes) was low?

Who knows? I don't think so. IMHO, since the US gov. confiscated most of the gold in the 30's... they really don't care where the price of gold goes.

Silver, for some reason, is different. The gov. has intervened twice in my lifetime to stop a price spike in silver while letting gold continue to run up.

For me, the greater question is why do they do that to silver?

Precious metal speculators make their money in silver and hold it in gold. Silver is poor mans gold. It gets no respect. That is why we see volatility both ways. The BSD's try to outdo one another and not one of them ever wants to be holding the bag when the reversal hits. That's why gold is currently safer than silver. The fundamental reasons are thrown out the window when egos get involved. When egos get involved in micromarkets, then large swings occur as these big players increase and decrease their amount on margin. When the COMEX sees too many trades on margin, then they get scared and reel in the price by increasing the amount of cash that the BSDs need to put up in order to play with their buddies. This margin requirement just makes BSD's close out their silver trades.

This same situation does not occur in the gold market. It is actually bigger (more players), which makes these tremendous swings like we saw in silver only possible as a black swan event in gold... where all traders run simultaneously into a better store of wealth. (Is there one?)

agree with MH. another way to say the same thing is the Comex already changed the rules for both silver and gold, but it only had a big effect on silver because that is the market with the more leverage. the margin increase forced liquidiations which temporarily hurt the price. recall gold fell fromalmost 1550 to 1480s.