BillHolter.com

Bill’s Commentary:

“…But American regulators go into Sgt Schultz mode and see nothing?”

The 22% silver flash crash today was driven by aggressive shorting.

– Trading volume hit 1.3 million ounces this morning
– That’s nearly 2× global mine supply in a single session
– The SHFE flagged six groups of accounts for abnormal trading behavior
– Those accounts were… pic.twitter.com/tPai4ENEKG

— Lukas Ekwueme (@ekwufinance) February 5, 2026

Bill’s Commentary:

“Another view of the Great Taking”

You Don’t Own Your Stocks the Way You Think You Do

Most Americans believe that when they “buy” a stock, bond, or exchange-traded fund in a brokerage account, they become the legal owner of that security. The statement shows their name, and the shares appear as belonging to them.

But in the modern U.S. securities system, that intuition is often wrong in the way that matters most: legal title and control. What most investors hold is not a directly owned asset recorded in their name, but a contractual claim—what the law calls a “security entitlement”—against a financial intermediary.

That may sound like semantics until one asks a simple question: In a systemic financial collapse, who is first in line to retrieve those securities? In other words, the difference between owning an asset and holding a claim can determine whether investors’ assets are legally subordinated to other claims, and whether investors recover their assets at all.

Read more here…

Bill’s Commentary:

“To All, what you are witnessing is the beginning of the breakdown… of everything. Stocks have rolled over, interest rates are elevated, especially in Japan (carry trade), real estate is squishy and commercial real estate crushed 50%, Bitcoin assaulting $60k on the downside, silver crashed 40% in a week, and gold a 7-8% pullback from its highs. 

   Please understand this, no physical gold nor physical silver has been dumped anywhere in the world except metal that was bought on margin which is miniscule. This is purely an operation, those of us who have stacked for years have seen this MANY times going back to 1996. This attack is nothing new, it is only larger and more in your face. How does crashing the price of silver, create a larger supply of the metal which is used and last year had over a 400-million-ounce+ supply demand deficit? It doesn’t, it only exacerbates it! 

  “Leverage” (margin) is used all over the world and on everything… to the long side, with a few exceptions, namely precious metals and various other commodities. Their playbook calls for leveraged selling of naked paper contracts to suppress price. Only when the credit markets break, will we know true values to gold and silver. The leverage must and will be unwound, and in the case of gold and silver, the only way to unwind is forced buying by the naked shorts. 

  What we saw over the last 3 months was certainly a sight to behold, but only an appetizer with the main meal to come! Going back to the late 1970’s and 1980, the Hunt brothers ran silver to $50. The COMEX changed the rules and would only accept sell orders which crashed the price. The Hunts were margin called and bankrupted.  Today is an exact 180 degrees from 1980, the vast majority of leverage short (to the downside) which means there is now built in buying coming from the shorts as their only way to close is to BUY. In essence, this is the reverse Hunt brothers!

  Let them sell paper all they want, lower prices will not bring forth the desperately needed additional supply; in fact, the deficit may even widen as producers slow walk sales? Unless you must sell in the next week or two, sit tight and relax, this will all pass and you have capital outside of the system… which you soon might need?!”

Still standing watch, 

Bill Holter

www.BillHolter.com

Bill’s Commentary:

“Paper burns, metal does not…!”

Silver’s Day of Reckoning: Shanghai Just Triggered the End of Paper

February 5, 2026, will go down in precious metals history as the day the paper façade cracked. What unfolded on the Shanghai Futures Exchange wasn’t a market correction—it was an act of financial warfare. A 17% collapse in hours, an avalanche of synthetic silver traded into oblivion, and the fingerprints of coordinated short-selling plastered all over the tape.

They called it volatility. Don’t believe it. This was the Shanghai Paper Hammer.

Over 1.3 billion ounces changed hands on the sell side—more than the entire annual global mine supply. That’s not trading; that’s a tactical strike. Price collapsed 22% in a two-hour flash—from near $90 an ounce back to the mid-$70s—but only in paper. In the physical world, nothing broke. Dealers from Shenzhen to Zurich didn’t lower prices; they ran out of silver. This isn’t speculative froth blowing off—it’s the suppression machine throwing its final tantrum before the gears seize.

Read more here…