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The climax came on Thursday, when the Bache Group, which owns one of the nation's largest brokerage houses and is in turn 5.6% owned by the Hunt family, announced that it had issued a $100 million margin call on the Hunts and that they could not, or would not, put up this additional cash to protect their position. Wild rumors flew that Bache was about to go under. Stock and commodity prices went into a nosedive. Bache asked the Government's Commodity Futures Trading Commission to close to close the silver market. The commission refused. "Despite the seriousness of the situation," said Chairman James Stone, "certain lines need to be drawn. The primary job of the CFTC in the silver markets is to protect small customers and commercial users. We are not here to afford protection to large speculators or the shareholders of the firms that seek their business."
In fact, Bache appears to have enough capital to meet any demands on it, and by week's end markets had rebounded sharply. The Securities and Exchange Commission began an investigation, presumably to determine whether Hunt had manipulated the market. Bunker, closemouthed as ever, was said to be in Saudi Arabia, conferring with his colleagues, and Wall Streeters were trying to figure out his position.
The 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 on more than one occasion."