EURUSD 1.1851 |
USDJPY 111.52 |
GBPUSD 1.3772 |
AUDUSD 0.7485 |
USDCAD 1.2406 |
GBPJPY 153.59 |
EURJPY 132.15 |
AUDJPY 83.48 |
CADJPY 89.86 |
Silver 26.23 |
Friday's $2431 high in gold consisted of a 21% rise from the Feb 14th low. Such percentage extensions from key lows or/and technical levels such as the 200-DMA, could flag crucial opportunities for partial/full profit-taking. Watch here.
Bitcoin versus Miners Performance
As many of you know 2023 was kind to members of our WhatsApp Broadcast Group who snapped up shares in bitcoin miners, while 2024 has so far been more superior to Bitcoin than most of the miners...
View Hot-Chart..
HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were accused in an investor's lawsuit of placing "spoof" trading orders to manipulate silver futures and options prices in violation of U.S. antitrust law.
The investor, Peter Laskaris, alleges that starting in March 2008, the banks colluded to suppress silver futures so that call options, or the right to buy, would decline, and put options for the right to sell would increase, according to the complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. The collusion was also intended to maintain prices at levels at which some options would expire as worthless, Laskaris claims.
The banks placed so-called spoof trading orders, or the "submission of a large order which is not executed but influences prices and is then withdrawn before it reasonably can be executed," according to the complaint.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission began probing allegations of price manipulation in the silver futures market in September 2008. At a hearing in Washington on Oct. 27, CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said there have been "fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control" silver prices and that violators should be prosecuted.
Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesman for New York-based JPMorgan, declined to comment. Juanita Gutierrez, a spokeswoman for London-based HSBC, also declined to comment.
Separate, Similar Complaint
A separate, similar complaint filed yesterday on behalf of investor Brian Beatty, and naming the same banks as defendants, claims a whistleblower contacted the CFTC last year and reported the banks' conspiracy to suppress prices of silver futures to profit from "enormous" short positions in silver futures.
The banks reduced their collusive trading and their holdings in the futures market after a government investigation of silver futures manipulation began in March, according to the complaint filed by Laskaris, which seeks class-action status. Since the banks cut back on their silver futures trading, prices have increased about 50 percent, the suit alleges.
"These price changes directly result, at least in one substantial part, from defendants' reduction in their concentration and other reductions of their unlawful activities in the silver markets since the government investigation," according to the Laskaris complaint.
Comex Trades
Laskaris described himself as a New York resident who traded in silver futures and claims damages based on the collusion. The trades at issue in the complaint were made on the Commodity Exchange Inc. division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, Laskaris said in the complaint. Beatty, a resident of Connecticut, makes the same claim.
Christopher Lovell, a lawyer representing Laskaris, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment after business hours yesterday.
Chilton spoke at an Oct. 27 hearing in Washington on regulations to implement the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, which became law in July and gave the commission a year to establish rules governing the $615 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.
Whatever the conclusion, not only investors, but the American people should recognize that Wednesday, even more than Tuesday, represents a critical inflection point in determining our future prosperity. Of course weve tried it before, most recently in the aftermath of the Lehman crisis, during which the Fed wrote $1.5 trillion or so in checks to purchase Agency mortgages and a smattering of Treasuries. It might seem a tad dramatic then, to label QEII as critical, sort of like those airport hucksters, I suppose, that sold whale blubber for a living. But two years ago, there was the implicit assumption that the U.S. and its associated G-7 economies needed just an espresso or perhaps an Adderall or two to get back to normal. Normal just hasnt happened yet, and economic historians such as Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart have since alerted us that countries in the throes of delevering can take many, not several, years to return to a steady state.
The Feds second round of QE, therefore, more closely resembles an attempted hypodermic straight to the economys heart than its mood elevator counterpart of 2009. If QEII cannot reflate capital markets, if it cant produce 2% inflation and an assumed reduction of unemployment rates back towards historical levels, then it will be a long, painful slog back to prosperity. Perhaps, as a vocal contingent suggests, our paper-based foundation of wealth deserves to be buried, making a fresh start from admittedly lower levels. The Fed, on Wednesday, however, will decide that it is better to keep the patient on life support with an adrenaline injection and a following morphine drip than to risk its demise and ultimate rebirth in another form.
http://www.pimco.com/Pages/RunTurkeyRun.aspx
Proposals to throw part of Japan's trillion-dollar cash pile into securing overseas natural resources raises the stakes in a global battle for strategic assets and the power that comes with them.
If the world's second-biggest hoarder of foreign currency reserves were to use chunks of that money to buy scarce global commodities, it could propel resource prices skyward, stoke world inflation and lead countries to put up more barriers to such capital.
(This was on CNBC today, but the forum software keeps rejecting the link I paste!)
http://pragcap.com/is-the-dollar-rally-about-to-kill-risk-assets
" Eliminating stop-loss orders may be one of the steps regulators will take in an attempt to prevent another so-called flash crash, according to a white paper published Friday. Analysts at Themis Trading identified four major recommendations that they believe Securities and Exchange Commission staff will make in response to the events of May 6. Most notably, they said, officials may want to scrap stop-loss orders. "[Stop-loss] orders were not the cause of the flash crash per se, but they resulted in enormous damage to many unsuspecting traditional investors. The SEC has indicated that it may require market order 'collars,' effectively converting market orders into limit orders," they wrote."
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sec-may-abolish-stop-loss-orders-analysts-2010-09-24
Europeans Push Global Forex Treading Tax to Fund Poverty-Reduction
A group of 60 nations will meet next week at the United Nations to push for a tax on foreign currency transactions as a way to generate revenue to meet global poverty-reduction goals, including climate change mitigation.
Spearheaded by European Union countries, the so-called innovative financing proposal envisages a tax of 0.005 percent (five cents per $1,000), which experts estimate could produce more than $30 billion a year worldwide for priority causes.
Yen Intervention Fans Flames Of Anti-Japanese Rage Across China
Anti-Japanese rage reached the highest level in years last night in China, says The Standard:
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=13&art_id=103008&sid=29601951&con_type=1
In Guangzhou, protestors hurled beer bottles at the Japanese consulate. In Tianjin, they damaged Japanese buildings and fired ball bearings at a foreign school. In Hong Kong, activists stormed the Japanese consulate.
Even Beijing has endorsed massive protests this weekend.
Anti-Japanese sentiment has to do with a captured fishing boat and territorial protests -- but it also coincides with a yen intervention that will challenge China's export advantage.
American politicians are already siding with Japan. Rep. Sander Levin today said Chinese currency policies caused the Yen intervention, which in turn hurts American exports.
What we really don't want to see, however is an escalating currency war, which could force a dollar intervention and all sorts of chaos.
Read more:http://www.businessinsider.com/yen-intervention-fans-flames-of-anti-japanese-rage-across-china-2010-9#ixzz0ziwvJcb8