Thank you all for your comments, but no one yet has explained exactly why the silver price has been completely FLAT. FLAT as a pancake. No movement at all.
Look at any chart you want to and you will see this last week there was no movement at all in its price for several days.
This is what I am asking an explanation about.
This is the reason for this thread, and this has yet to be answered.
I already know about all that other stuff mentioned, but no one can answer why the price has been locked / fixed for the past several days.
Silver hs not been flat - it has been plummeting since early June.
I cannot say for certain why as PM's are often an emotional buy. Also, as Dave Fagan rightly pointed out above, the silver and gold paper markets are often not reflective of the physical markets. There have already been convictions of various institutions of deliberately manipulating the FOREX exchange in gold/silver.
But to answer you question, I believe that people are exiting gold/silver because the Fed is slowly raising rates and is indicating that they are going to shrink their huge balance sheet and the equity markets are still rising. The Fed raising rates is anti-PM's as raising rates is anti-inflation and PM's love inflationary pressures. And the fact that this is not (yet) hurting the equity markets is a theoretically positive sign...also anti-PM's.
I assume the PM markets are thinking 'hey, the Fed is unwinding and everything looks - more or less - good...guess we did not need PM's after all'.
This is why I think silver and gold are falling lately.
That is, of course, a big mistake as the Fed is just inching up rates and has still not begun to unwind their balance sheet. The fundamentals of the economy still stink and everything is running on hope and optomism...not solid fundamentals.
Thanks to the almost decade long ZIRP policy a MASSIVE amount of new debt has sprung up. ALL of it completely dependent on ultra cheap rates. WHen those rates go back to historical norms...those debt payments will become unmanageable and that is when we will see how strong the economy REALLY is.
Remember, the M2 Money Velocity has been falling hard almost ever since the Fed started ZIRP. and it is still falling and is presently at the lowest point on record:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
Yet, the economy is still growing.
That means that money is not changing hands (a traditional sign of economic growth) but the growth is coming from new money created from massive amounts of new, cheap debt.
Basically, the economy is growing on the basis of incredibly cheap loans...but that maybe ending. And when it does and works it's way throuigh the economy....that is when the problems will begin.
I have said it before, PM's are a roller coaster ride. They shoot up and crash down.
But their fundamentals are inflationary concerns and monetary instability. Both of those are still INCREDIBLY strongly in play. But right now, the markets want to believe everything is great...so they are.
It's like Tesla stock. The company has NEVER posted a profitable year in 13 and loses thousands on every car they sell...yet the stock keeps skyrocketing. Why...hope and ignorance. It's a feel good stock.
Over the last 10 years or so, the markets have gone almost completely away from fundamentals and embraced positive thinking and government/Fed stimulus. The same sort of illogic permeated the markets dring the dot.com and housing booms...and we all know what happened with those...and this one is MUCH bigger then both of those combined.
If you need the money you have in silver and are having trouble dealing with the ups and downs...maybe you should get out. I would not be surprised if silver drops a LOT more before it rises back up.
Will it rise again? I am positive it will. When will it? I have no idea.
But all this debt HAS to unwind sometimes. And the massive instability that brings should be wonderful for PM's.
But that could be years...even many years...away.