历史回顾； 1997Buffet买进1.29亿盎司白银期货， 银价从4.5涨到7.4，

Buffet 要求提货对家没有， 然后政*府*干*预不用按时交货,

让对家一年之内交货， 交货前按40%付违约金给Buffet。

９年后这批白银成了JPM控制的SLV白银基金

（据说哈：SLV开张的时候有１１０ million troy ounces， 基本上全部是BUFFET献给小摩的。持到现在可是暴赚的。据说BUFFET因内幕交易被胁迫吐出所有白银换取免于起诉。BUFFET加入魔狼军团以后就不遗余力的贬低黄金白银了， 可悲可叹。）

1997- Warren Buffet.

* I got my chance to not get run over in 1997, when Warren Buffet gave an order to Phibro to buy silver.
* Short version. Here is what went down.
* Buffet gives Phibro the order- fact
* Phibro begins filling it as a broker using various OTC dealers as counterparties, and letting the I.B dealers sweat getting out of the risk. - fact
* Phibro buys options for their own account (no exercise game this time tho)- fact
* Phibro buys futures for their own account. – not confirmed.
* One by one the IB dealers start to catch on that this is no ordinary order Phibro is handling. They back away and liquidity gets harder to find.- fact
* Other bigger hedge funds in the small circle of professionals, and other smart firms start getting long.- fact
* Silver starts getting delivered from the Comex vaults. Some of it actually removed. Some of it just “covered with a sheet” for removal. But ounces begin to be removed from the warehouse. Phibro was rumored to be taking delivery and beginning to telegraph fear in the markets to start spoofing the VWAP. Rumor was they had a warehouse in Red Hook where they stored it. Never confirmed.
* Point here is, the saps for the last part of this play were the producers and refiners who were complacently net short and dependent on above ground silver to satisfy delivery requests.
* Producers had been over-hedging for years in this market, as silver was cheap and they had business cash flow issues. It was their habit to sell forward production not yet available to them. And if forced to, they would lease already above ground silver and make delivery, collateralizing it with silver yet to be mined. Their positions were habitually synthetically long the contango as they rolled their deliverable production further and further out the curve in an attempt to squeeze much needed cash (cost of carry)for their businesses. The net effect was that sometimes they had to borrow silver for prompt delivery while they rolled their production hedge back further. – my interpretation of what I learned. May not be accurate to the “T”, am not a physical guy.
* Example: in 1995 a miner has silver due above ground in 1997. He hedges it in Z-1997 contract. Z 1997 comes and if he doesn’t have that silver available for some other reason; he covers the short and rolls it back. How much he needs to do this is a function of his obligations, cash flows, and his greed for carry. If leases are cheap, he will seek to capture all the contango and lease it until he gets the silver available.
* If lease rates go up, it is not unlike a miner strike. Silver is needed for delivery now, and term risk becomes the issue. Contango collapses and market goes backwardated. He will be forced to sell the contango to get that prompt silver short back if he cannot make delivery. He has to defer delivery.
* These guys were dependent on the specs NOT taking delivery for years. Specs didn’t have balance sheets to take and store physical metal. Specs usually were the weak hands at futures expiry.
* But then…..Entities that stored silver in bank vaults (like the Republic bank vault) begin to remove silver from the available pool for leasing. This made the “easy money” portion of production financing no longer easy. Think: smart money getting the word that a squeeze was on and playing along with it.
* Phibro (and others) start selling the contango in the futures market to prepare to take delivery of even more contracts. Or at least put pressure on the producers who had front month shorts they would have to make a decision on delivering. Phibro KNEW that the producers had to sell the spreads to get their shorts back. But they couldn’t lift their shorts altogether as part of their financing deals with their bankers. Their own positions were now breaking down in every way except flat price. The market really didn’t move much. This let them stay in denial.
* Buffet announces he is long and intends to take delivery of silver. Contango collapses. Market spikes to 7.40.
* Rumor is gov’t intercedes and asks Buffet to not do this, it would break the industry. (Kind of like how the exchange begged the gov’t to help it shut down the Hunt Bros.) He says ok, and agrees to lend then their silver back to them. Essentially charging them 40% interest to delay delivery for a year.