Comment Text:
Dear Commissioners,
As a private citizen and small investor in precious metals, I urge you to implement the letter of the law in regard to position limits, without making any special exemptions. We need more transparency in these markets so that the true price can be discovered by real supply and demand. Extensive naked shorting of commodities is destructive to the honest ideals of capitalism. Especially in the case of silver, the market is so small and thinly traded that excess naked shorting can create distortions in the trading price of the metal. This type of speculation allows dishonest manipulation of the market.
I urge you to approve the staff’s proposal on position limits, including limiting exemptions to bona fide hedgers. I would ask you, however, to readjust the proposed formula in silver. The current formula would result in a position limit of over 5,000 contracts for any single speculator, on an all-months-combined basis. 5,000 contracts is the equivalent of 25 million ounces of silver. This is too high of a threshold in light of the realities of the world silver market.
Please institute a reasonable 1500 contract (7.5 million ounce) position limit for silver.
Sincerely,
Allen Kaatz
Seattle, WA
