Futures market

It is not true that there has been a secret protocol, reintroducing fixed exchange rates, though the lackluster price action in the foreign exchange market and the continued erosion of volatility make it feel almost like it. 

One glance at the 'ticks' surrounding this morning's so-called "fat finger" in EURCHF and it is clear that this was anything but a human trader falling asleep on his keyboard or accidently selling 100 yards and not 100 million CHF... Welcome to the 'unrigged' markets... (in FX also)... where stop-hunting algos rip to a 50-day moving-average in milliseconds to remove all stops before fading back ingloriously to unchanged. As Nanex suggests, this started in the CHF futures market...

Now that both the FBI and the DOJ have woken up from a half-decade slumber realizing there was riggedness, RIGGEDNESS going on in these here stock markets courtesy of Michael Lewis' book, it wasn't long before those most impacted by the frontrunning startegies of HFTs spoke up - anyone who has lost money in the stock market since Reg NMS was conceived. Sure enough, in a lawsuit that was just filed by lead plaintiff William Charles Braman, seeking class-action status, and filed on behalf of all users of real-time futures market data and futures contracts listed on the CBOT and CME from 2007 to now, the CME is allegd to have sold order information to high-frequency traders ahead of other market participants.

There is much new info in the just released Bloomberg profile on the infamous ex-JPMorganite Blythe Masters, among which the disclosure that she had made it clear that she had wanted to go along with the disposable JPM physical commodities unit (which as was reported recently, was sold to Swiss commodities giant Mercuria) and "and continue as the group's chief", a plan which did not work out as she had planned since she has no plans to "join the unit’s purchaser" (although joining Glencore is another matter entirely, and one which looks increasingly plausible) but what we find most striking is the following revelation: "Masters is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. That probe was opened following a settlement with regulators that alleged JPMorgan manipulated power markets in the Midwest and California."

Is the US or the World Coming to an End? It will be one or the other

2014 is shaping up as a year of reckoning for the United States. One of two things is likely: Either the US dollar will be abandoned and collapse in value, thus ending Washington’s superpower status and Washington’s threat to world peace, or Washington will lead its puppets into military conflict with Russia and China. The outcome of such a war would be far more devastating than the collapse of the US dollar.

There is a stark difference between the states of the markets for the monetary metals. The number of open futures contracts in gold is low, while in silver it’s high. What does it mean?

A week ago we wrote: 'While it has been public for a long time that i) JPM is eager to sell its physical commodities business and ii) the most likely buyer was little known Swiss-based Mercuria, there was nothing definitive released by JPM. Until moments ago, when Jamie Dimon formally announced that JPM is officially parting ways with the physical commodities business. But while contrary to previous expectations, following the sale JPM will still provide commercial gold vaulting operations around the world, it almost certainly means farewell to Blythe Masters." Sure enough:

JP MORGAN COMMODITY CHIEF BLYTHE MASTERS LEAVING, WSJ SAYS       

Farewell Blythe: we hope your replacement will be just as skilled in keeping the price of physical gold affordable for those of us who keep BTFD every single day.

The purpose of Quantitative Easing is to support the balance sheets of a few over-sized banks and to finance the federal budget deficit at an artificially low rate of interest. In other words, QE supports failed banks and federal fiscal irresponsibility. In order to successfully carry off this blatant misuse of public policy, the price of gold, a measure of the dollar’s value, must be suppressed. The Federal Reserve’s lack of integrity speaks volumes about the corruption of the US government.

A look at the price action in the foreign exchange market, within the context of fundamenal developments.

Gold is a tangible commodity. It's a material good that can be held in the hand, bought and sold--and warehoused. You have to understand warehousing to understand the gold market.

Curious how China imported a record amount of physical gold in 2013 without in the process sending the price of gold to new record highs? Here is the answer...

While every other asset class in the world has now been found to be subject to some form of manipulation (from LIBOR rates to FX fixes and from commodity warehousing to HFT equity front-running), the stakes in a COMEX silver/gold/copper manipulation lawsuit are staggering. Not only is market manipulation the most serious market crime possible, the markets that have been manipulated and the number of those injured are enormous. It is likely not an exaggeration to say that any finding that JPMorgan and the COMEX did manipulate prices as we contend could very well result in the highest damage awards in history. That’s no small thing considering the tens of billions of dollars that JPMorgan has coughed up recently for infractions in just about every line of their business. Our point is that no legal case could be potentially more lucrative or attention getting than this one. It is clear the CFTC will never act and so class-action lawsuits may just be the only way the data is du into deep enough to uncover the truth.

If you said a short list of commodities manipulated by the Too Big To Prosecute banks, you are probably right, but the answer we were looking for is that these are all the various, and increasingly more ridiculous, commodities that serve to make up the bulk of China's hot money flow (those flows into China which are not reflected in the current account flows or FDI) facilitating synthetic structures, also known as Chinese Commodity Funding Deals.

My investigation into gold trading irregularities, including the time around the London fixes, initially began after reading the work of the late Adrian Douglas, along with Dmitri Speck.

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