Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - All Is Well -1987 and Its Consequences

"On a side bar. remember a couple of years ago, when I went on CNBC to talk to them about things that were happening in the markets in the afterhours that didn't make sense, and looked like an 'outside force' was moving them?   And they laughed at me, and told me to take my theory to Hollywood, and see if they would make a movie of it!  And then a month or so later, a guy came out and proved my theory?  Well. I have to believe that the rise of Gold and Silver, the rise of Treasury yields, and Oil, all being reversed on a dime, smells like PPT. it walks like PPT. and it talks like PPT."

Chuck Butler, Everbank World Markets


“Instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thereby stabilizing the market as a whole.”

Robert Heller, Federal Reserve Board


"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Today is the 30th anniversary of Black Monday, the crash of 1987.  I remember it very well.

As you may not recall, on Tuesday following the crash, with the futures market indicating a significantly lower open, Alan Greenspan and the Fed came in buying SP 500 futures in order to turn the markets around. And it worked.   And it continued, with the Fed supporting the equity markets with jawboning, persuasion, and occasionally direct intervention, so that by the end of the year all was well with the markets.

And most will forget that Mr. Greenspan's expansion of the role of the Exchange Stabilization Fund for currency markets to manipulate equity and commodity markets was formalized in the following year. On the advice of his financial advisors, President Reagan formed The Working Group on Financial Markets (colloquially referred to as the Plunge Protection Team) was created by Executive Order 12631, signed on March 18, 1988.

 And thus came the era of bubble-nomics.

Stocks in the US opened significantly lower after an overnight sell off overseas.

The cause of that selling was the news out of Taiwan that Apple has significantly reduced orders to its suppliers for the iPhone 8.

Bearing in mind that there is an option expiration on Friday, and more importantly that the stock market has become a proxy for the economy in general, steady buying was applied almost from the opening bell, especially to the SP 500 futures.

And see that the SP and the Dow managed to finish in the green, while the tech heavy NDX finished in the red.

This is classic bubble top action.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Summer Knows

"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Stocks were a bit on the wobbly side today, although the SP futures managed to close on the green.

The SP futures, or rather the manipulation of them, was a Robert Rubin innovation.   He noted that you can let a financial crisis happen, and go in afterwards and spend a great deal of money fixing the collateral damage in the markets.

Or you can intervene with leverage in the SP futures, specifically, in order to get ahead of the declines, and make the clean up job just that much easier.  Neater, cleaner, and best of all, cheaper.

And in the aftermath of the Mexican debt crisis, under Rubin's practical guidance and Greenspan's acquiescence, the Exchange Stabilisation Fund grew into a formidable presence, the abiding 'invisible hand' in the markets, also known colloquially as the 'Plunge Protection Team.'   It has one of the few federal budgets that never really gets audited, outside of the military.   And that is fitting, because these days paper money is an instrument of war.

But once you start that music playing, the trick is not how to keep it going, because a lie is almost inexhaustible as long as everyone still believes it.  No, the trick is how to ever stop.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Consolidation Day and Tragedy In Canada

"Anger is the enemy of non-violence, and pride is a monster that swallows it up."

Mahatma Gandhi

There was a terrible shooting of some innocent people near the Parliament in Ottawa today. Such actions are never justified, and are simply murder, no matter what rationales some may wish to put forward. That these types of things may be used to promote oppressive responses by some is simply a doubling of the tragedy and injustice.

As Gandhi said, 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.'

Gold and particularly silver were under pressure for most of the day.  They may have taken a pause at support.

It is interesting to see them run with stocks today, in the face of some exogenous risk events. They are certainly acting oddly.  One has to wonder if this is a related action by the 'Plunge Protection Team' which feels free to purchase stocks at key points apparently to help restore confidence.

Huge offtakes of physical gold are occurring, as highlighted by the official statement from China concerning their acquisition of 2,199 tonnes of gold bullion in 2013.

Let's see how the rest of the week goes.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts.

I believe the general manipulation of markets we are seeing now will be traced back to Robert Rubin who formulated a principle of financial activism, or intervention before the fact, as being cheaper and more effective that repairing markets after they suffer a significant decline as Greenspan had done in 1987.

As you may recall the 1987 experience led Reagan to form the President's Working Group on Markets, which grew into the infamous 'Plunge Protection Team' of the 1990's which made generous use of the Exchange Stabilization Fund, an opaque kitty used for general market tinkering.

Treasury Secretary Rubin's favorite tool of choice in the markets was said to be the SP futures since they carry the best 'bang for the buck.'

Apparently LIBOR is quite good on the interest rate side of things as well.


The Federal Reserve is adding Daily Gold Prices to their FRED database.


Perhaps they think the price might become more interesting in the near future, or more deserving of their official concern.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Silver Manipulated, and a Silver Exchange Holiday

There has been some significant intraday commentary.  I wished to highlight the portion of it that deals with the disposition of the metals markets.

There was a remarkable admission on a major US television network that the silver market is being manipulated.

And having thought about this for some time, afterwards I put forth a possible scenario about what comes next given the inevitability of some event on the exchange, given the severe imbalance of claims to legitimate supply, which are estimated at 40, 50, and even 100:1.

I can envision a holiday for the American silver exchange and the forced settlement of all paper bullion claims for a set price, much lower than what will follow next.  This might include gold as well.

It is difficult for a manipulation scheme to come to any other end, given the length of time it has been in place and the size of the positions still being held by the untouchable Banks and Very Important People.  I imagine they will blame some defunct scapegoat, like a Bear Stearns.

If you do not think that this is possible, read the description.  It sounds very much like the sudden decline and fall of MF Global.

Knowledge grows when shared. If you enjoy these things, then you may wish to consider passing them to others.

Front Running the Fed In the Treasury Market

I had a friend from the old neighborhood who was Comptroller of a major casino in Las Vegas in 1970-80s, where I also was married in 1981. Only lasting win from there, ever.

According to this dour son of Italy the way he could spot a problem, besides the more aggressive methods of observation and detection, would be to examine the returns on a table basis. In the short run they will vary, but in the longer term each game will provide a statistical return that rarely deviates from the forecast, unless someone is cheating. We would walk through the casino, and he would point to a table game and say "at the end of the month, this table will bring in xx percent."

It was he who introduced me to Bill Friedman's book, Casino Management, which is a useful read if you wish to learn more about that end of the speculative business from the house perspective.

Attached is some information from a reader. I cannot assess its validity, not being in the bond trading business. But it does sound like someone has tapped into the Fed's buying plans to monetize the public debt and is front running those buys, essentially 'stealing' money from the public. Its what they call 'a sure thing.'

To try and figure out who might be doing it, I would look for some big player who is showing extraordinary returns on their trading, with consistent profit that is not statistically 'normal,' too consistently good. The problem with cheaters is that they sometimes get greedy and call attention to themselves.

In Las Vegas the bigger cheats were often taken out into the desert for further inquiry and final disposition. On Wall Street they are somewhat more arrogant and persistent, defying resolution with that ultimate defiance, "We'll just find other ways to cheat again."

Time for a trip to the desert?

Here are a reader's observations from the bond market.

From a reader:

I used to work for a BB on a prop desk until the financial crisis took hold and they fired the less senior guys on the desk. I now trade US Treasuries, for a small prop firm in xxxxx, to scalp basis trades in mostly on the run securities. Occasionally, I will also take position in the repo markets for off the runs if I see something "mispriced." Your recent article piqued my interest because we too have noticed "shenanigans," of sort, in the QE program of USTs.

What we noticed, especially in smaller issues like the 7 Year Cash is that before a Fed buy back would be announced the price would pop significantly as buyers would run through all the offers on two major electronic exchanges (BGC Espeed and ICAP BrokerTec). This occurred more than several times as the 7 Year Cash would be overvalued both by its BNOC by 20-30 ticks and its relative value to similar off the runs. This buyer(s) would lift every offer they could, driving the price substantially above its "value" for sometimes a week at a time. After this buying would occur, the Fed would then announce the purchase of that security sometimes a handle above its approximate value. This "luck" did not just occur in the on the run 7 Year sector, it also occurred in the 30 Year Cash, 3 Year Cash, and more than several off the runs. Again, it was especially prevalent in the less liquid treasury products. Often the "appetite" for these securities would begin approximately 2 weeks to 1 week before the official Fed announcement. The buying was well organized and done in such a way as to completely knock it off kilter from its relationship with like cash Treasuries and the CME Ten Year Contract. If you examine the charts of some of the selected buy backs before the official announcement, you will see a similar occurrence.

While I have not broken this down into a paper to prove it (and I see nothing positive coming out of contacting the ESS-EEE-SEE about this issue), I can assure you that it was occurring on a consistent basis across the entire curve.

A certain issuance would be bid up through the market (substantially above value, as derived by several metrics) only to be later gobbled up by the Fed at the unreasonable price. These player(s) had substantial pockets as we, the small guys (but with a decent capital base), would take the other side of what seemed to be an obvious fade. While this did not occur in every single issuance of the QE program, it occurred often enough to be obvious to any learned observer.

While I am not sure if this can be attributed to purposeful Fed policy or someone at the Fed talking to his pals, I am certain it transpired."

Corruption is inevitable when the government is engaged in manipulating the markets with public monies. That portion of the Fed's activities needs to be scrutinized by the GAO on a continual basis. And the activities of the Exchange Stabilization Fund and the Treasury in market intervention should be subject to review by the legislative branch on behalf of the people.

Of course another option is to keep the Fed and the Treasury out of the public markets altogether excepting short term interest rates and specifically identified emergencies.

Who Is the 'One Big Bidder' For US Treasuries?

There are a number of possibilities for the identity of the non-primary dealer domestic source of enormous purchases at the longer end of the yield curve in recent US Treasury auctions.

It could be a misclassification, a branch of a bank representing a foreign power. The problem with this theory is that foreign Central Banks have a reluctance to buy the long end of the curve.

It also could be a legitimate domestic purchaser like a pension fund compelled to match duration of obligations, as is required by a little noted ruling of the US government a couple of years ago. They might be shifting out of other long term instruments with similar durations but more risk.

It might even be PIMCO. They certain have the money as the world's biggest bond fund, and they do offer two Treasury ETF's which, although not directly related to the products bought, might be relevant on a cross trade. And PIMCO has recently been talking down Treasuries in favor of corporates, which doesn't mean anything since traders often 'talk their book.' Still, unless it is for the ETFs it is hard to justify buying the long durations straight up in size. And while PIMCO says they do not like Treasuries, Benny and the Fed said they are buying long to keep interest rates lower. Why doubt them?

And of course, it might very well be the Federal Reserve Bank, or the Treasury via the Exchange Stabilization Fund.

It could also be the big bidder who comes in with some regularity and smashes down the price of the precious metals, with the obvious intent of manipulating the market, like clockwork just after the PM fix in London with some frequency.

It might even be the mysterious bidder who stands ready to buy the SP futures at every weakness, maintaining a floor on the market, and a steady drift higher in prices, with no change in fundamental underpinnings. Their hand in the market is apparent.

It is less probable, given the state of market manipulation by a few big proprietary trading desks riding another wave of cheap FEd money, but it might even be the party that entered the US equity market yesterday at 12:03 PM with a HUGE order (228,000 contracts) to buy the SP futures. As Larry Levin noted, "As of now I don't have a firm answer, but whether it was HFT activity, the "Helicopter," or a massive cross trade, it sure set the bottom in for the afternoon. Everyone in the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P pits were talking about it and nobody was willing to sell into that massive bid." And so the market rallied once again into its current peak. No doubt it will be blamed on Monsieur Fat Fingers. Funny how lucky the big prop traders are with their reckless accidents, with millions gained from gaming the market, and all by accident.

As the article from the Financial Times indicates, it might never be possible to find out who this is, unless there is an audit of the market that is made public. As Edmund Burke noted, "Fraud is the Minister of Injustice" and it is my experience that opacity is the accomplice of fraud. Who has the most to hide these days?

Personally I think the Fed is buying across the yield curve to affect interest rates, and Treasury takes care of stocks and commodities through the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and friends in a few key banks, but who can say for sure, without the power of wiretap, audit, and subpoena?

If this is price manipulation, no matter the intentions or beneficiaries, it is likely that it is mispricing risk in a big way, misallocating investments, and will eventually will fail. Its failure will cause a great deal of pain in the real economy for innocent bystanders, and will end in tears. And when that time comes, expect those who created the crisis to make the public another offer that they think you cannot refuse, in excess of their last demand for 700$ billions, tout de suite.

You decide what is most likely, and what needs to be done about it, if anything.

More than a few people are wondering at the lack of response from the people in various nations, particularly in the UK and the US. Here is some old knowledge that might prove illuminating.

National Madness
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1910

"This slow and awful self-hypnotism of error is a process that can occur not only with individuals, but also with whole societies. It is hard to pick out and prove; that is why it is hard to cure. But this mental degeneration may be brought to one test, which I truly believe to be a real test.

A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane...

For madness is a passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli, as well as an unnatural stimulation. There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor or from glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in silence, but with serenity."

And in this slow descent into madness, the worst is surely yet to come.

Financial Times
Direct bids for US Treasury notes lead to speculation over buyer
By Michael Mackenzie in New York
January 14 2010 02:00

Auctions of US Treasury notes this week have attracted extremely strong buying from domestic institutional investors, fuelling speculation that "one big bidder" has decided to defy the conventional wisdom on Wall Street that US government debt is due for a fall.

Yesterday, direct bids accounted for 17 per cent of the sales of $21bn in 10-year Treasury notes, far higher than the recent average of 7.4 per cent. It was the highest percentage of direct bids in a 10-year Treasury auction since May 2005.

On Tuesday, direct bids accounted for a record 23.4 per cent of the bidding for $40bn in three-year notes, up from an average direct bid of 6 per cent.

Market participants say the unusually high level of direct bidding suggests that a large investor is looking to accumulate Treasuries without alerting the primary dealers on Wall Street to its intentions.

"It appears to us that someone is trying to hide their apparent interest in owning these auctions from the rest of the market," said David Ader, strategist at CRT Capital.

Rick Klingman, managing director at BNP Paribas, said: "It is unusual to see such a spike in the direct bid and I would imagine it is one big bidder. There is no way we will find out who it is, not now, or ever."

The surge in direct bidding is particularly notable because it comes after predictions that the record levels of Treasury debt issuance would exhaust investor demand, driving yields higher.

Among the most high-profile warnings came from Pimco, manager of the largest bond fund, which raised concerns about the escalating supply of US Treasury debt.

Attention will now focus on whether there is similar direct demand for today's $13bn 30-year bond sale.

The 10-year notes were sold at a yield of 3.754 per cent yesterday, the highest rate awarded for a note sale since June, when they were issued at 3.99 per cent. At the start of the year the yield on 10-year notes briefly traded at 3.90 per cent, as many investors talked down the prospects for Treasuries. The note traded at about 3.70 per cent earlier this week and was at 3.70 per cent late yesterday.

Under the three main classifications of buyers in Treasury debt sales, direct bidders are generally domestic non-primary dealer banks and large institutional investors. Normally their presence at Treasury auctions is small, as they usually buy debt through the primary dealer network, which currently numbers 18 banks and broker/dealers.