In addition to central bank buying, another reason for gold's big rise in recent years is the appearance of the Shanghai Gold Exchange. This means that London / US can no longer effectively suppress the world gold price via the daily London Gold Pricing Mechanism. They actively suppressed gold for decades to make their fiat currencies look less bad, but can no longer do it.
But they can presumably still suppress silver, and with silver being a key input for solar panels, there was an incentive to keep silver prices down. But the emphasis is now shifting away from solar energy, so keeping the silver price down isn't as big a priority.
With stocks, while there can be manipulation, it's usually the company's own bad business decisions that cause their stock's decline, and then the shorts merely pile on to take advantage. Occasionally there is a planned short attack on a stock by a group who has done copious research on the company's shortcomings. That's what happened to SMCI last year (Hindenburg Research). One way to look at these outfits is that they're actually doing the market a service by taking the wind out of crooked stocks.
Either way, Wall St is a jungle, with jackals and hyenas everywhere. Throughout history it's always been this way, because it's human nature.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
