Thread by @tommyhump

He's often called Canada's Warren Buffett

Jimmy Pattison is a shrewd CEO & value investor who built a $16 BILLION fortune (Forbes)

But, Jimmy made & lost a killing in the #silver market, turning $25K to $78M in a few yrs before losing it all in a few months

Or so he thought🧵:

There's a joke in mining that if goldbugs are crazy, then silver enthusiasts are truly deranged.

The boldest silver investors ever were oil billionaire brothers, Nelson Bunker and William Herbert Hunt, who tried to corner the market in the late '70s as a hedge against inflation.

This sent silver prices soaring from $6 per ounce a year earlier to $50 per ounce in January 1980. However, the US government stepped in and the market crashed quickly. The Hunt Brothers lost an estimated $1.75 billion and faced numerous lawsuits and legal battles.

Bunker Hunt and Jimmy Pattison hit it off at a commodities trading seminar in Dallas in the ‘70s.

Jimmy's speculation in commodities began with an investment of $25,000, which grew to $800,000 within one year.

He reminisces, "I got caught up in the excitement, the fun of the trading… Soon I was trading precious metals in London and Hong Kong too so I could trade around the clock; some nights I’d wake up at three in the morning to call London.”

As the Hunt brothers drove up the prices of silver, Pattison's leveraged speculations soared in value.

He was "so in love with the soft, white lustrous metal" that Pattison took delivery of 2 million ounces of silver in Christmas 1979.

Maureen Chant [pictured with Pattison in 2017], Jimmy’s secretary, flew home from New York City with freely tradable silver certificates worth $60 million hidden under her clothing.

A month later, his $25 thousand investment was worth $78 million!

But Pattison stubbornly held out for $100 mil, at which point he was going to cash in and buy a big jet.

Looking back, Pattison said he ignored the warning signals when the Comex declared an emergency, and silver crashed to $34 in a day. By March, it bottomed at $10.20.

On the way down, Pattison sold but kept jumping back in. "That's when I was plain stupid." Facing repeated margin calls, his $78 million was gone. "Shut down our positions," Pattison told Chant. He couldn’t sleep that night. "After that, I told myself, 'Let's get on with it.'"

At the office later that week, Pattison was surprised to find $6.6 million on a financial statement he didn't know he had. When he asked Maureen about it, she confessed to not telling him the truth.

"I hid that money.

Because as long as you knew you had it, you'd still be meeting your silver margin calls."

Saved from himself by his trusted secretary, Pattison profited $6.6 million in the silver market, a far cry from $78 million but still a significant sum considering his $25,000 starting stake.

At 94 years old, Pattison continues to speculate in commodities markets, and Maureen Chant still works with him.

The Pattison empire has 50000 employees. Jimmy is the only shareholder. Here’s how he did it:

https://twitter.com/tommyhump/status/1625348484655378433

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