Word: oz.
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...Bunker Hunt is lying low these days, which is not easy for the 275 Ib. Croesus, whose silver market setback last month triggered Wall Street's worst panic in nearly two decades. Hunt had tried to corner silver and been badly squeezed, when prices plummeted from $21.50 per oz. to $10.20 in less than four days. Early last week Hunt was tucking into a steak dinner in the Rib Room of London's Carlton Tower hotel when a Merrill Lynch customer's man seated near by spotted him. After Hunt had returned to his room, the eager...
...paper loss of nearly $1 billion in the silver markets two weeks ago may have been the first robin that heralds the coming recession. At least that is what some shell-shocked silver traders were saying even as the market recovered last week to close at $14.65 per oz., up over $4 for the week, but a far cry from its January high of $50.35. Says Thomas Herzig of P.R. Herzig, a Wall Street metals broker: "The play on the silver market was the beginning of deflation. Hunt's situation was not an isolated thing. Silver...
...with IOUs scattered all over Wall Street. Chief among them: $33 million to Bache Halsey Stuart Shields; $10 million to Paine Webber and $4 million to St. Louis Broker A.G. Edwards. The biggest debt was owed to Engelhard Minerals and Chemical Co. Hunt had contracts to buy 19 million oz. of silver from the firm at $35 per oz. Fulfilling that agreement would have meant paying $665 million for silver worth only $270 million in the market that day. Following a feverish negotiation, the Hunts were finally let out of their commitment in return for giving Engelhard 8.5 million oz...
...selling silver in Europe, and traders interpreted that as a signal that he was running out of cash. Then Bunker, Herbert and their associates offered to sell billions of dollars worth of bonds in Europe to be backed by a "substantial portion" of the estimated 200 million oz. of silver they hold. These bonds would pay a low rate of interest (estimated at 8%). One theory, advanced by Metals Dealer Andrew Racz, is that they were trying to raise money at low cost to invest in higher yielding (15%) U.S. Treasury bills, or even, as James Sinclair, another bullion broker...
...mathematics are awesome: if Hunt's group really does own 200 million oz. of silver, its value would have fallen from $10 billion at the $50 January price to around $3 billion early Thursday, and then dropped another $1 billion that day alone. But even at the late Thursday price of a bit more than $10, it would still have been worth more than $2 billion, assuming they could sell the metal without pushing the market even lower. Says one blas Dallas commodities broker: "From my standpoint, this is no surprise. The Hunts have made or lost $1 billion...