I believe we witnessed a masterclass in market manipulation yesterday, in the precious metals mining sector.  Not because the miners fell, but because of the way they fell, the extent of the losses, the glaring discrepancies in the percentage losses almost across the board despite only minor percentage losses in gold and especially silver.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               As I watched it play out I knew something was different about this particular smackdown,  Not only the sequence after Monday’s trading but the way many of the individual miners I watch, traded during the day.  I still wasn’t sure why or what news I either missed or was about to come out, until a random tweet I saw commented on how the ETF’s were responsible(or more likely, the vehicle used to accomplish the feat.)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 It makes a lot of sense. If you are the banks or any other large market participant and see that the best outperformance in the US equity market since the beginning of the year, has been the precious metals mining sector and you want to get in it with reasonable size without running up the prices in a sector that has a limited number of names with relatively small market capitalizations, you go short and keep the pressure on the ETF’s that hold most of those few names.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   While driving down the ETF’s and keeping the pressure on all day you are simultaneously acquiring the underlying names in size(individual miners had very high volume in many cases) without worrying about forcing up their prices. Brilliant battle plan and execution. We should know in about a week or so, if this is what took place or if my thesis is all wet.