- The dollar bounces back on Wed and overnight
- What is a “tail”?
Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! Well, a week from now, I’ll be back home and, in the saddle, once again at my writing desk… At least there I don’t have to put my laptop and everything else I use to write away when people come over like I have to here! I don’t want to go home, but… Easter is around the corner… Just two more weeks of eating fish on Friday… not that I mind, it’s just that I like to have options when it comes to meals! I know, I know, I’m being somewhat picky… but at my age, I’m surprised I’m not picky all the time! It’s OPENING DAY in baseball which should be a National Holiday… Radiohead greets me this morning with their song: Karma Police
The dollar gained a bit yesterday with the BBDXY adding 2 index points… I really don’t see why the dollar bugs would be buying dollars right now, but que sera sera…. Gold gained $35 on the day… and although Gold was much higher in the early morning trading, the SPTs were there to make sure it didn’t kick tail and take names later…. And Silver also saw the SPTs chop down Silver’s early morning gain, and left Silver with just a 2-cent gain… Gold closed on Wednesday at $4,507, and Silver Closed at $71.38…
I would have thought that the SPTs were finished with their wash, rinse, repeat cycle… But just to remind us that the wolf is always at the door, the SPTs were loud and proud yesterday… the thing to think about after all the dust settled on the Gold takedown… Gold provided liquidity to the stock jockeys big time! Silver’s takedown was a different animal altogether… The FWIW article today explains what happened with Silver, so I won’t get into it here…. You’re Welcome! HA!
The price of Oil recovered yesterday, and one day after the Oil traders were buying the Peace talks hook, line and sinkier, thus marking down Oil, the price of Oil rose yesterday and ended the day trading with a $90 handle..
And the 10-year Treasury didn’t see any Fed Head yield control, but it also didn’t see much selling and ended the day trading with a 4.34% yield.
The currencies, as you probably already figured out, are hiding again from the Big Bad dollar… The euro lost the 1.16 handle yesterday, and even the Chinese renminbi slipped some vs the dollar. The Petrol Currencies like Norwegian krone and Brazilian real have held their ground somewhat vs the dollar, but they hadn’t seen the rise in Oil just yet… so that’s coming…
I had a dear reader send me a question about something that he had come across regarding the awful auction of the 2 year Treasury that I talked about yesterday… he had come across an article that talked about a “tail” in the auction…
So, I responded “From my days in the bond dept I was taught that The price tail is the difference between the average price paid in an auction and the cut-off price (the lowest price at which a bond was bought in the auction). A big price tail is seen as a negative. Why? Because the marginal buyer of the bond was only willing to pay a much lower price than the average. Remember as a bond price goes down, the yield goes up!”
I repeated that here because I though many readers might have a need to know what a Tail was….
In the overnight markets last night… The dollar gained a bit more with the BBDXY up 1 index point and starts today at 1,212…. I shake my head in disbelief but carry on in spite of this debacle…. The SPTs are back at it this morning with the metals. Gold is down $61 and Silver is down $3.31… As usual the SPTs take the largest hunk of flesh from Silver…. I’m about at my wit’s end trying to figure out what the SPTs will do next, and what is their goal?
The price of Oil has really bounced overnight and trades this morning with a $93 handle… The Iranians have now acknowledged that they have received the POTUS’s list of things to settle the war… But… They said that have no intention of ending the war… So, we have that in our back pocket today… This is, as I told you it would in the beginning, taking much longer than I think the Generals thought it would… And the longer it takes the more pressure on Oil, fertilizer, LNG, and other things that go through the Strait of Hormuz… I’m just saying…
And finally the 10-year finally got off its duff last night, with the yield moving higher to 4.38%
Bill Bonner had a quote in his letter yesterday that can be found here: https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/p/time-running-out-on-stocks?source=queue
While reading the letter I kept having the song by the Byrds pop in my mind.. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…
Bill was talking about a time to buy stocks… A time to be born, and a time to die,…. no wait, I’m not going to go through the whole song here! He talked about buying stocks when they are cheap and selling when they are high…. A time to weep, and a time to laugh…. Bill also thinks that the time for stocks is not now…. Ok enough of this….
You will find yourself very lucky if you don’t have an ear worm with that song all day today now!
I told you yesterday about how the auction of the 2-year Treasury was awful… A onetime even? I hardly think so, and in fact there was another awful auction this time of the 5-year Treasury yesterday. Here’s Zerohedge.com with their review of the auction: “After yesterday’s appallingly bad 2Y auction, moments ago the Treasury sold $70BN in 5Y paper in what was another terrible auction.
Just after 1pm, the auction stopped at a high yield of 3.966%, up from 3.608% in February and the highest since May 2025. It also tailed the When Issued 3.966% by 1.4bps, the biggest tail since Oct 2024.”
There’s that word again, “tail”… you know we hadn’t seen auctions like this before… Where the participants dwindle, and the ones that do show up, demand a better yield… At least, I don’t recall any time in the past where we had two awful auctions back-to-back…. belly-to-belly, I don’t give a damn cause I’m stone dead already… No wait! Now is not the time for that song, Chuck!
The U.S. Data Cupboard today at least as the usual Thursday fare of The Initial Weekly Jobless Claims… This data hasn’t been market moving lately as it keeps showing that there is no labor problem…. And we were cutting rates with regards to a labor problem? We do have 4 Fed Heads out speaking today, maybe, just maybe because you never know, one of them gives us a market moving comment..
To recap… The dollar bounced back yesterday after a couple of days of selling with Gold & Silver also bounced back, but not with the help of the SPTs… The euro lost the 1.16 handle it held for two days, as the dollar bugs bought peach/greenbacks! The price of Oil rebounded and the 10-year was docile again…
For What It’s Worth… Ok, this is a long explanation of what’s going on in Silver and I can’t print all of it, so if you want more you’ll find it here:Bull Theory on X: “🚨 SILVER CRASHED NEARLY -50% IN 53 DAYS. And we may have found who caused it. Silver hit ATH $121.64 on January 29, 2026. Today it sits at $65, a 46% collapse, and 25% of that drop happened AFTER February 25, 2026. Why does that date matter? Meet Jane Street. They made https://t.co/km1h7L6en0” / X
Or, here’s your snippet: “The physical silver backing SLV is held by JPMorgan, who paid $920 million in 2020 for manipulating precious metals markets, the largest CFTC sanction ever, after admitting their traders placed hundreds of thousands of fake orders in gold and silver futures for 8 straight years with their top spoofer receiving 2 years in prison.
So the full picture: the silver backing the ETF is held by a bank convicted of 8 years of silver manipulation, and the largest holder of that ETF is a firm documented running a cash into derivatives manipulation scheme in India and facing a federal lawsuit for insider front running in crypto. Silver is down 46% and sitting at $65 today.
None of this is proven in a US court and the macro explanations for the crash are real.
But no regulator has asked the one question that matters: what was Jane Street’s TOTAL net silver position on January 29 and 30, including the full options book and complete derivatives exposure?
Because if the India playbook was running in silver, the $1.3B ETF stake was just the cost.
The options position on the other side was the profit. And the 49% crash was not a crash. It was a payout.”
Chuck again… This is very interesting… and if their pointing a finger at Jane Street is true and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, then we have our answer…. A shame these people don’t get sent to jail… and fining them is just a “cost of business”…. but the point he made about how JPMorgan is the holder of the Silver ETF… I want to know… how in the hell is this possible?
Market Prices 3/26/2026; American Style: A$ .6926, kiwi .5782, C$ .7222, euro 1.1544, sterling 1.3347, Swiss $1.2618, European Style: rand 17.0488, krone 9.6534, SEK 9.4721, forint 336.41, zloty 3.7009, koruna 21.1983, RUB 82.23, yen 159.54, sing 1.2841, HKD 7.8360, INR 93.97, China 6.90.91, peso 17.83, BRL 5.2273, BBDXY 1,212, Dollar Index 99.67, Oil $93.29, 10-year 4.38%, Silver $68.57, Platinum $1890.00, Palladium $1,406.00, Copper $5.51, and Gold… $4,496
That’s it for today… Today should be A NATIONAL HOLIDAY! I say this every year, and every year it gets ignored… It’s Baseball’s Opening Day… it should be a National Holiday! And it did turn out to be yet another Commerce of Chamber Day weather wise here in S. Florida yesterday… The days are getting warmer and I love it! I’m as excited as a schoolgirl to get the baseball season going! And I agree with Yogi Berra when he said, “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” And James Earl Jones said it best when he said: “The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But Baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again” The Yardbirds take us to the finish line today with their song: For Your Love… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ National Opening Day today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler