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Buffett dumping silver?
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December 4, 1998: 8:25 a.m. ET
Investor believed to have sold much of his hoard as metal's price dives
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Commodities kingpin Warren Buffett is believed to have sold a large stake of his silver holdings Thursday, precipitating a drop in the metal's price.
The Financial Times of London, citing analysts, said the price fluctuations and volume in the silver market Thursday suggested that a major holder had substantially reduced its stocks.
Buffett, a closely watched investment mogul, at one point held about 16 percent of world supplies.
"The market movement is consistent with exit from the market of a large speculator," said one analyst, who asked not to be identified. "Circumstantial evidence points to Warren Buffett."
Silver prices have dropped sharply in London since hitting a 9-1/2 year high of more than $7 in February, when it emerged that Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway investment vehicle had amassed almost 130 million tons of silver since mid-1997.
Berkshire Hathaway declined to comment to the Times.
According to the report, Buffett is thought to have paid about $5 an ounce for his holding, and analysts speculated he would have to begin selling off his position this year as the price falls, a drop attributed to lower industrial demand for the metal.
The commodities market this week is hovering around a 21-year low, weighed down by emerging-market pressures and a broad imbalance of supply and demand.
The downturn in agricultural and industrial product prices is indicative of the ongoing malaise plaguing emerging market economies and the low growth, low inflation environment at home.
Those are the same factors that have triggered a flight to quality in the domestic bond market.
Emerging market economies have been dumping commodities, including steel and oil, on the open market at bargain basement prices in efforts to export their way out of recession. That, in turn, has created a global glut of low-priced commodities, leaving many U.S. companies unable to compete.
Analysts say it may be "just a matter of time" before prices on the commodities board slip further. 
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