July 3, 2017 -- Gold and silver got off to a tough start last week when the a trader dropped a sell order on the COMEX for just over 1.8 million ounces of paper gold. Gold instantly dropped nearly $20 per ounce and silver followed it lower.

The damage could have been worse. The metals recovered slightly and held their ground through the rest of the week. Technical support for gold appeared pretty solid at around last Monday's low of $1,236, but that level was breached this morning.

This sort of concentrated selling happens with alarming regularity.

And it is a further indication of how broken the paper markets are. There is no telling how much physical metal the trader involved actually possessed at the time, if any. In recent years the bullion banks have leveraged their physical holding of metals by 100 to 300 times.

Notably, these massive concentrated orders only happen on the sell side. You won't find single buy orders for $2 billion worth of gold. But it would be fun to see what happens to the spot price if we did.

Check out precious metals live spot prices here:
https://goo.gl/7HCPfM