The Thursday in March 1980 when the American brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and Herbert Hunt, seeking to corner the silver markets, were unable to meet a margin call on their futures contracts. The brothers were two of the fourteen children of the Texas oil magnate H.L. Hunt, who was the richest man in the United States when he died in 1974. Bunker and Herbert started investing in silver as a hedge against inflation and by 1980 it was estimated that they held one-third of the world's supply of the metal. When silver prices slid, the Hunt brothers failed to meet huge margin calls on their futures contracts, sparking a panic on commodity and futures exchanges. A consortium of US banks provided a $US 1.1 billion line of credit to enable the brothers to pay their debts. The Hunts lost hundreds of millions of dollars through their speculation in silver but the family fortunes withstood the setback. See also: cornering the market.
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