Market Analyst, Micheal Oliver's Approach

I ran across a fascinating interview with Michael Oliver, a well-known market analyst who has been a market observer for as long as I have (some 50 years or so). Although his approach is strictly along technical lines, instead of the fundamental approach that I employ, his observations in the interview should be of interest to everyone here when he speaks of gold and silver. Despite looking at gold and silver with a vastly different methodology as is possible from mine, Oliver’s conclusions are nearly identical to mine. Specifically, he refers to silver as the next Bitcoin and projects a price of $200 or so by the end of next year. Since I try to avoid interpreting what anyone else says, I would urge you to listen for yourself. (The specific discussion on silver starts around the 11 to 12-minute mark)

Based strictly upon his technical approach, which involves measuring price change momentum, he projects a monster move higher as and when the $1860 or so level in gold and $28-ish level in silver are taken out. Eventually, he expects to see $8,000 to $10,000 in gold by the end of 2022 and $200 or so in silver. Oliver also anticipates a severe decline in the stock market by then and a sharp-up move in commodities in general. As I said, I don’t like to interpret what others have said, so if you feel I’ve misstated anything, he did say, please let me know, and I’ll make amends.



Perhaps most fascinating of all is that Mr. Oliver suggests that silver investors ignore the interim selloffs in price (I assume like yesterday’s) and focus on the coming major price liftoff – most unusual for a non-fundamental (actual supply and demand) approach. I do get the sense that Oliver does not consider himself a technical trader in the usual sense of the term.

Having stated that, I agree with everything he said, at least about silver; I’d like to explore what strikes me as an uncanny and quite specific agreement on a matter, coming from almost entirely different perspectives. Certainly, I’ve always disclosed I’m not given to technical analysis, although I reference it often since it has such apparent impacts on prices. And there is some overlap in the terminology both Oliver and I use – for instance, market structure – although we are clearly referring to different things.

I must say that I found Oliver’s take on the silver to be most reassuring, and he certainly spared no detail or lacked any conviction in his forecast. While I refrain from specific price targets and timelines (even though I know that is what most want to hear), that’s due to not wanting to appear full of hubris (or anything else). Still, how is it possible to develop nearly the same specific price expectation when coming from two very different perspectives? Aside from the obvious, namely, that it remains to be seen if both of us will prove to be right or wrong, I do believe there is a common denominator uniting both forecasts, even if that denominator is not fully disclosed. The denominator of which I speak that connects the two different approaches is the ongoing COMEX price manipulation.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone bullish on silver, which includes just about everyone who has seriously considered its future price path, is knowingly or unknowingly acknowledging the COMEX manipulation. Where do I get off making such a statement? To be sure, I am not asserting that Oliver deliberately has evaded knowledge of the ongoing manipulation. However, any market analyst relying on price patterns as the basis for their analysis would have a tough time acknowledging manipulated prices. After all, artificially derived prices (manipulation) would render any approach relying on the price change as suspect. At the very least, it would require an explanation as to why artificially derived prices would be the same as prices derived from free-market forces.

Admittedly, it’s much easier for me to point to the COMEX silver manipulation as the cause behind why silver prices are still so low in the face of provable supply/demand forces that call for much higher prices. But that’s not just a handy excuse I’m employing to deflect criticism for why silver prices haven’t exploded by now – or I hope that no one thinks that. There has to be an explanation for why silver has not responded to the forces in play, evident to everyone.

Indeed, I’m aware that there has been no explanation that comes close to reconciling the extremely bullish actual supply/demand forces in silver and the lack of free-market price response. Even the federal commodities regulator had every opportunity to reject my allegations of concentrated short selling by a few big COMEX traders and explain why that excessive short selling wasn’t suppressing silver prices. Instead, it punted and implied it referred the matter to its divisions of Market Oversight and Enforcement.

I understand why anyone employing the analysis of price change wants to avoid questions about the validity of the price itself. Just as I understand how those who initially rejected the idea that silver could be manipulated in price long ago are reluctant to admit it now – who likes to admit to being wrong about anything? Unfortunately, this avoidance and reluctance play right into the hands of the manipulators and enable the manipulation to continue.

I’m certainly not picking on Oliver. I respect his work and think he will be proven correct, but when he depicts a chart showing a price decline in silver for nearly the past ten years as portending a monster move higher when it breaks $28, does he not wonder in the least why silver was so sluggish for so long? It’s one thing to dismiss a depressed price for a decade as saying its time had not yet come – but shouldn’t some further thoughts have crossed one’s mind? When I look at that same decade of depressed silver prices, all I see is the hand of JPMorgan being the biggest COMEX short seller. All while accumulating the world’s largest hoard of silver in history – which I chronicled on a twice-weekly basis and notified the regulators and JPM about in every article I wrote over this time.

My point is that I find it most remarkable that there seems to be near-universal agreement that silver is destined to move shockingly higher from every possible perspective – technical and fundamental. A reaction to growing unprecedented monetary and fiscal expansion and currency concerns – and all with an unspoken common denominator, namely, that its price is dirt cheap. All I’m trying to do is get others to recognize the underlying cause for the low cost, just as Izzy Friedman challenged me to uncover in 1985. In essence, silver would not be so cheap if the four big shorts on the COMEX weren’t as short as they are – and for no legitimate purpose to boot.