The Bank's "Kill Switch" Officially FAILED Today; So They Changed the Rules -- It will NOT save them

Hal Turner,

12 December, 2025

They waited until you were asleep. It is an old tactic, a cowardly tactic, but effective. Last night, while New York was dark and London was just pouring its coffee, the powers that be fired their most dangerous weapon in the Precious Metals Market (Silver).

They didn’t sell metal. They didn’t announce a new mine. They didn’t fix the supply chain.

They changed the rules of the game. If you woke up this morning, checked your phone, and saw red candles in price charts -- If you saw the price of silver smash down from its highs, and you felt that pit in your stomach, and that fear that “here we go again,” stop.

Breathe. Because what you’re looking at is not a market crash. It is an act of desperation.

The exchange, the entity that is supposed to be a neutral arbiter of price, stepped in overnight and raised the margin requirements for silver futures. They made it 50% more expensive to hold a position than it was yesterday. They tried to force liquidation.

They tried to trigger a long squeeze. They tried to break your spirit before the weekend. But here’s the news they didn’t expect.

Here’s the data point that should terrify JPMorgan and delight every single person holding physical metal. Their effort this morning . . . It didn’t work.

In 2011, when they did this, the price collapsed 30% in a week.

In 1980, when they did this, the price collapsed 50%.

Today, the price flinched, it dipped, and then it stood its ground. In this comprehensive investigation, I’m going to expose exactly what a “margin nuke” is.

I am going to show you the historical playbook they are using, word for word, from the 2011 crash. And I’m going to prove to you, using the volume data from this morning, that the smart money didn’t sell the dip. They swallowed it whole.

The banks fired their silver bullet; and the werewolf is still standing. This is the story of the Friday showdown.

To understand why the market is red today, you have to understand the casino that is the COMEX. Most people think the price of silver is determined by two people swapping a coin. It isn’t.

It is determined by speculators trading futures contracts. These contracts are highly leveraged. Until yesterday, if you wanted to control 5,000 ounces of silver, you didn’t need $300,000. You only needed a performance bond, or margin, of about $12,000. That is roughly 25:1 leverage. It allows hedge funds, day traders, and algorithms to bet massive amounts of money with very little cash down.

This leverage is what allows the price to fly up. But it is also the kill switch that the exchange controls. Here is what happened last night:

The CME Group issued a notice increasing that margin requirement. Let’s say they raised it from $12,000 to $18,000 per contract. That doesn’t sound like much, right? But imagine you are a hedge fund holding 1,000 contracts.

Yesterday, you needed $12,000,000 in cash on deposit. Today, at 2AM, the exchange says, you now need $18,000,000. You have one hour to wire us $6,000,000 or we sell your position.

Where do you get $6,000,000 at 2AM? You don’t. So the exchange’s computer automatically sells your silver contracts at market price to cover the difference. This creates a wave of artificial selling.

It’s not because the fund wanted to sell. It’s not because the fundamentals changed. It’s because the house changed the buy-in.

This is the “margin nuke”. It is designed to flush out the weak hands, the speculators who are overleveraged. When they sell, the price drops.

When the price drops, other people panic and sell. It triggers a cascade. That was the plan.

That is what they did in May 2011. They raised margins five times in nine days. They hiked the cost of betting on silver by 84%.

It destroyed the demand and silver fell from $49 to $33. They are running the exact same play today.

They looked at the 60 plus DOLLAR-PER-OUNCE breakout.

They looked at the empty silver vaults.

They looked at Bank of America’s losses and they pulled the lever, raised margins.

But this time, the result was different.

Why? Because the people buying silver in 2025 aren’t speculators using 25:1 leverage. They are industrial users and sovereign nations paying cash. Tesla doesn’t buy silver on margin. The Indian government doesn’t buy silver on margin. They buy with full payment.

So when the exchange raises margins, the strong hands don’t care. They don’t get liquidated. This is why the price only dropped a few cents instead of a few dollars. The margin nuke only kills the paper speculators.

It does nothing to physical buyers. And today, the market proved that the physical buyers are now in control.

I want to take you back in time. Because if you don’t know history, this red candle of the charts showing the value of silver today will scare you out of your position.

The date was Sunday, May 1st, 2011. Osama bin Laden had just been killed.

The news cycle was chaotic. Silver had just touched $49.50. It was a parabolic run. Everyone was euphoric.

Then, under the cover of darkness, the CME Group announced a margin hike. They raised the maintenance margin by 13%. On Monday, silver dropped $5.

The next day, they raised it again. On Wednesday, they raised it again. By Friday, they had raised margins five separate times.

They beat the market into submission. They forced the liquidation of billions of dollars of long positions. It worked.

The price crashed and it entered a bear market that lasted for years. The banks are relying on your muscle memory of that event. They want you to look at today’s chart, remember 2011, and think: “the party is over. I need to sell before it crashes.“ They are weaponizing your trauma.

But look closer at the chart today. In 2011, the drop was violent. It was 10% in a single day.

Today, we are down less than 1%. We are consolidating. Why the difference? In 2011, the rally was driven by paper demand. It was driven by hedge funds buying futures contracts and SLV options. There was no shortage of physical metal in 2011. The vaults were full. So when they killed the paper demand, the price collapsed.

In 2025, the rally is driven by physical depletion. We have a 1.1 billion ounce deficit in the actual supply of physical silver.

The vaults are empty. Refineries are halted. You can raise margins on paper contracts all you want; it doesn’t create physical metal. It doesn’t help Samsung build solar panels. It doesn’t put silver back into the LBMA vault.

The margin nuke is a paper weapon used to fight a paper war. But we are in a physical war and you cannot bomb a physical shortage with paper regulations. The fact that the market absorbed this blow today is the most bullish signal I have ever seen.

It tells me that the paper market has become irrelevant. The physical market looked at the margin hike, shrugged, and kept buying. So if the margin nuke failed to crash the market, what did it actually achieve? It created a bear trap.

A bear trap is a technical pattern where the price is manipulated lower to trick traders into selling, only to aggressively reverse and trap them.

Think about the psychology of the average Joe trader today. He sees the news. Exchange raises margins. He sees the price dip below $64. He thinks, “the top is in; or, the government is stepping in. I better sell now and short the market to make money on the way down.” So Joe sells his silver.

Maybe he even places a short bet, betting it will go to $50. But who’s on the other side of that trade? Who bought Joe’s silver at $63.80? Was it another retail trader? No. Retail traders panic on red days.

It was an algorithm. It was an industrial buyer. It was a sovereign wealth fund.

They sat there with their limit buy orders, waiting for the margin nuke to shake the tree. They knew the weak hands would fall out, and they stood underneath with a bucket to catch the cheap shares. This creates a springboard effect.

Now the market has cleared out the weak, leveraged speculators. The ownership has transferred from paper hands to diamond hands.

The people holding silver tonight are not the people who panic over a margin hike. They are the people who hold for the long term. This makes the price floor rock solid. And what happens to Joe, who went short? When the price turns around on Monday, when it gaps up to $65, Joe is trapped. He has to buy back his short position at a loss. His buying adds fuel to the fire.

The margin nuke didn’t kill the rally; it reloaded the cannon. It cleared out the leverage so the next leg up can be sustainable. We are building a base at these levels, and a base built on physical demand is infinitely stronger than a spike built on paper speculation.

This brings us to the weekend risk. Why are the banks fighting so hard to keep the down today specifically? Why Friday? Because they are terrified of the weekend. In a globalized market, the weekend is when the western suppression turns off and the eastern reality takes over.

The COMEX closes on Friday afternoon. For 48 hours, the paper manipulators cannot touch the price. But the world doesn’t stop. News happens. Deals happen. And the Middle East and Asia markets open on Sunday night.

If silver closes Friday at a new all-time high, it sends a signal to China and India. The west has lost control. It invites a massive gap up on Sunday open.

The banks know this. They are desperate to paint the tape. They want the weekly chart to look weak.

They want a red candle or a long wick to signal exhaustion. They are trying to psychologically manage the sentiment going into the weekend break. But here is the danger for them: By keeping the price artificially suppressed today, by using the margin nuke to hold it down, they are effectively putting a sale sign on silver right before the Asian open. China sees the margin hike. They know it’s a sign of weakness in the western financial system.

Do you think China is scared of a CME margin hike? No. They view it as the west running out of metal and resorting to tricks. So Monday morning becomes a dangerous moment for the shorts.

If Asia interprets this move correctly, as a failed attempt to crash the price, they will attack the open. They will buy the liquidity that the west just provided. This is why you never ever sell physical metal on a Friday pullback.

You are selling into a manipulated dip right before the real market has a chance to respond. You are giving away your position to the very people trying to scare you. The weekend is coming.

And in a resource war, weekends are when the supply lines get redrawn.

Let me recap this rhetorical crime scene. Last night, the CME group raised margin requirements on silver futures by 50%.

Historically, this is the nuclear option. In 2011, this exact move crashed the market by 30% in days. But today, silver is sitting at 64.09, down barely 1%.

The nuke turned out to be a firecracker. We have established that the “bear trap” has been set. We have established that the banks are desperate to paint the tape red before the weekend.

But now we need to go deeper. We need to talk about the divergence.

While the paper price is being managed on the COMEX, something completely different is happening in the real world.

I’m going to show you the “shadow order” book. I’m going to explain why the industrial bid is basically an infinite wall of money. And I’m going to show you why this failed margin hike is actually the all-clear signal.

The rules have changed. But they didn’t change in favor of the banks. They changed in favor of the owners.

Let’s finish this investigation. Why didn’t the price crash today? This is the billion dollar question. If the speculators were forced to sell because of the margin hike, who bought their contracts? Usually, when speculators sell, the price free falls until it finds a bottom.

But today, every time the price dipped to $60.50, it bounced right back to $64. It’s like hitting a concrete floor. That floor is the “shadow order” book.

In the stock market, you can see the level 2 data. In the physical commodities market, the real trades happen over the counter. They happen in private phone calls between massive corporations and bullion banks.

Here is what is happening in the shadows right now. Corporate procurement managers at companies like Samsung, First Solar, and Tesla have standing orders. These are automated instructions given to their bullion banks.

They look like this:

“If silver drops below $64, buy 1 million ounces immediately.”

or

“If silver drops below $63, buy 2 million ounces.”

Why do they have these orders? Because they are terrified of the price going to $100. They see the dip today not as a crash, but as a discount. They know the fundamental shortage is real.

So when the CME raises margins and forces the paper speculators to sell, the industrial giants are sitting there saying, thank you, we will take that. This is a transfer of ownership from weak hands to strong hands. A speculator buys silver to sell it next week for a profit.

Samsung buys silver to melt it into a circuit board forever. Once Samsung buys it, that silver never comes back to the market. This is why the floor is rising.

The float, the amount of silver available for trading, is shrinking every time there’s a dip. The banks are helping the industry drain the vaults faster. By creating artificial dips, they are allowing the whales to accumulate cheaper metal.

So when you look at that chart and see it refusing to break down, you are seeing the strength of the industrial bid. It is an inelastic wall of demand that simply swallows paper manipulation. So the margin nuke failed.

What does the exchange do next? They are running out of options. This is where it gets dangerous.

If raising margins doesn’t stop the price rise, and if supply is truly halted, the regulators have only two cards left to play.

Card number one, position limits. They will announce that “no single entity can hold more than X number of contracts.” They will frame this as preventing corners.

But the target will be the ETFs and the family offices that are hoarding metal. They will force them to sell down their positions. This creates forced selling pressure.

Card number two, liquidation only mode. This is a nuclear winter option. They can declare that for the next 30 days, you are only allowed to sell contracts.

You cannot buy new ones. This effectively turns off the “buy” button. If nobody can buy, the price can only go down or sideways.

If they do this, the paper price will crash. It might go to $50. It might go to $40 on paper.

But here’s the catch. If they turn off the “buy” button on the COMEX, the buyers don’t disappear, they just move.

They move to the Shanghai Gold Exchange. They move to the London over the counter market. They move to the physical dealer network.

This will cause the great decoupling to accelerate. You will see COMEX silver trading at $40 because nobody can buy. And you will see physical silver trading at $90 because everybody wants it.

The spread will be $50. This destroys the COMEX. If the COMEX price is $40 and real silver is $90, no mining company will sell to the COMEX! Why would they? They will sell to Shanghai for $90.

The COMEX vaults will drain to absolute zero in weeks. The exchange will become a zombie market, trading paper ghosts with no metal.

So the regulators are trapped. If they leave the market alone, price goes to $100. If they manipulate it too hard, they destroy the exchange and lose control of the global price entirely.

They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. This is why today’s failure of the margin nuke is so critical. It shows they are losing the ability to influence the market without blowing up their own casino.

Let’s step back from the charts and talk about why we are here. Why are you holding silver? Are you holding it to make more dollars? Or are you holding it because you know the dollar is broken?

Today’s action, the manipulation, the margin hikes, the volatility, it’s all noise. It’s the sound of a dying system thrashing around.

The physical truth remains unchanged.

The geology: We are running out of silver. Grades are falling.

The energy transition. We cannot build the future without silver.

The debt. The global financial system is insolvent. They have to print.

When you hold physical silver in your hand, you hold a claim on the earth’s resources. When you hold a paper contract, you hold a claim on a bankrupt bank.

The events of the last 24 hours are proof that the paper system is detaching from reality.

The paper system is trying to say, silver is risky. Sell. The physical reality is saying silver is essential, Buy.

You have to decide which reality you live in. If you live in the paper reality, you are scared today.

If you live in the physical reality, you are buying today. The margin nuke was a test. It was a test of your conviction.

Did you panic? Did you sell? Or did you look at the price drop and smile, knowing that it’s just a discount on real money?

The banks are betting that you are weak. They are betting that you are impatient. They are betting that you will trade your hard asset for their paper promises.

Do not give them the satisfaction.

So what happens on Monday? I want to make a prediction based on the data. Because the margin nuke failed to crash the price, because the dip was bought up by industrial whales, the market is coiled like a spring.

Short sellers who added to their positions today are now trapped. They are holding shorts at $63.50. The price is $64.09. They are already underwater.

Over the weekend, the physical shortage stories will spread. The news about halted refineries will hit the mainstream. People will try to buy online and realize they can’t. Panic will build for 48 hours while the markets are closed, when the Asian markets open on Sunday night, and when the US market opens on Monday morning, there will be a rush to get back in. The shorts will panic cover. The sideline money will chase.

I believe we will see a gap up on Monday. We could open at $65.00 or $66.00. If we do, it leaves the shorts trapped below with no way to exit without driving the price even higher. This bear trap today was the necessary setup for the next explosive move.

It shook out the weak hands. It consolidated the price. And it proved the floor is solid.

The path to $70.00 and then $80.00 is clear. The banks fired their best shot. And they missed.

Friday, December 12, 2025. We survived the margin nuke. We survived the empire striking back.

If you are holding physical silver, go into this weekend with peace of mind. You own the asset that the world needs and cannot print. You own the asset that the banks are terrified of.

Do not let the volatility of the electronic pricing system disturb your sleep. One ounce is still one ounce. And that ounce is becoming more valuable by the day, regardless of what the CME computer says.

The game has changed. The old rules, where they could crash the price at will, are gone. The new rule is physical scarcity.

And in a world of scarcity, he who holds the metal makes the rules.

Enjoy your weekend. Ignore the FUD. Stay stacked. Stay strong.