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There are a variety of reasons to liquidate a large position.
But whatever the reason, no experienced trader would take a very large position into a thin market and then just dump it at the market, if they wanted to achieve some sort of reasonable economic benefit from selling that position. One does not do this unless they were under significant duress, or have some motive other than profit. Such a trade is called 'selling against yourself.'
Usually one diversifies their positions slowly and carefully, selling some and buying others without roiling the markets. At some point their trading objective becomes known, but by then it is fait accompli.
Unless of course they may have a strategy to lose some in one market while making huge profits and buys in others at cheap prices, as in the case of buys in the mining sector while slamming bullion for example. Here is one old hand explaining how funds rig the markets.
A trader who was being paid to obtain the best value for the seller would be fired if they simply dumped a large position in the market, driving the prices realized down almost 10 percent in less than an hour.
The same situation occurred at roughly the same time in the silver market, as hundreds of millions of paper ounces of silver were just dumped in the market in less than an hour, breaking the price down dramatically.
Such unbridled selling triggers other selling, as the complex web of trades and relationships drive other parties to liquidate their positions and trigger stop loss orders.
I have described in the past how the big trading desks use the Dr. Evil tragedy to artificially disrupt markets. Regulators are in place to prevent such things from happening.
And this is the story of the economy and the governance of the US markets today. There is little rule of law, only the power of size. And it will get worse as the paper game comes closer and closer to default.
Personally I think there were multiple reasons and beneficiaries from yesterday's market action in the metals. When the word goes out from some powerful party, others in the market find out and craft their own strategies and trades to benefit from this insider information. This is how outsized profits are made.
I believe that some parties who were heavily short silver were staring into the abyss, seeing a first delivery notice going out into a paper market that is many multiples larger than their ability to deliver silver bullion into it. And a default of a major commodity exchange would have disastrous results for the confidence in the markets, already stretched thin by fraud and scandal. So the interests of the big short, the government and the exchange might be aligned.
Let's see what happens. Because when these artificial market operations occur in a long term trend, they often are short lived, and tend to reinforce the primary trend, in this case the shortage of real bullion caused by many years of price manipulation and the resulting underinvestment to meet demand.
Still, there should be no need for speculation about what happened. The CFTC have the direct responsibility to question the seller's motives and trades, and to reassure the public about what happened. I am sure they will be doing that shortly, if they are actually doing their jobs.
When this tide of corruption goes out, 'we will see who was swimming naked,' as someone who some years ago owned a huge amount of silver, and then capitulated under duress and sold it, once said. And he remains bitter about it to this day.
“Large Seller in the Market” as COMEX Gold Hits $1,708
By GoldAlert Staff
February 29, 2012, 11:39am EST
...Commenting on the sell-off, CIBC World Markets wrote in a note to clients that “Gold – looks like a large seller of gold in the market. a 10k contract traded, down ticked the price by $40/oz. roughly 200k contracts trade per day, but unusual to see such a large single trade. not likely due to contract expiry either. That transaction represents 1mln oz of gold.
Postscript: Apparently I am not the only trader who saw this in the market. Caesar Bryan of Gabelli raises exactly the same concerns.
“What we saw yesterday in the gold market was very large volume just pounding the market lower and it raises the question, is this a seller who is trying to maximize his revenues? The answer is, maybe not because it was very sudden and the volume appeared to be very large.
This is actually similar to other experiences that we’ve seen in the last year where there has been a very sharp, sudden pullback in the gold market. But what I can tell you is the seller was not looking to maximize his revenue from the sales and to market participants like myself and others this is strange. The design of the selling raises serious red flags and leaves some questions unanswered.
I can only say the action was very odd and that’s as far as I want to go because I don’t know what the seller’s or sellers’ motivations were. We have seen this on a number of occasions over the last year where indiscriminate large selling will come in and the gold price falls like a stone. Sometimes gold falls $50 to $80, literally, within a few minutes..."
Read the rest here at King World News.
November 1967
April 1967
April 3, 1968, the day before he was murdered for speaking truth to power.
A time comes, for every one of us, all children of God, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian alike, and all who love God and hear these words, when we must choose. We will choose to bear the mark of the dark powers and principalities of this world, or we will refuse, and bind ourselves to the one God in heaven. It may be hard on some, easier on others. But we will all make that decision, and carry the mark of that choice with us forever.
That choice is not made once, but is forged with every action, every day, on our hearts. So when the final choice is made, we will choose by whom we have served. And keep in mind that although God is loving, He is also just. And there are sins against the Spirit that even a merciful God will not forgive.
So when you consider your actions, ask yourself, 'Is this God's will? Does it stand in the light of God's witness, His mercy and love? Am I listening to His Messenger, His Word, His Law, and serving the one God, or another, or myself?'
But God reserves justice, and vengeance, and wrath for Himself, and His command for us is simple: 'Thou shalt love the Lord your God, with your whole heart, and your whole mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
Someone told me that in Germany these days, no one really knows or cares about Sophie Scholl, and the White Rose Society.
I know. I remember. And I care. And in doing so I save myself, je me souviens.
And if I ever meet her and the others like her, who gave themselves up for what is good, who became beacons of light for us in the long, dark hallways of history, I hope I can say, "I did not forget you."
The silver shorts have their backs up against the wall. And that makes them dangerous.
Intraday commentary here.
It looks like there will not be a criminal case in the MF Global theft of customer funds, but they could face a fine of up to $140,000.
The viral moral hazard unleashed by TARP continues to multiply and reverberate through US financial markets to their detriment. It has a marked dampening effect on market participants, and encourages unethical behaviour and a spirit of lawlessness. In that sense MF Global is just one symptom among many of a major set of policy errors committed by the Fed, the Congress, and the last two administrations at least.
"In economic theory, moral hazard is a tendency to take undue risks because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk. The term defines a situation where the behavior of one party may change to the detriment of another after a transaction has taken place...Economists explain moral hazard as a special case of information asymmetry, a situation in which one party in a transaction has more information than another. In particular, moral hazard may occur if a party that is insulated from risk has more information about its actions and intentions than the party paying for the negative consequences of the risk. More broadly, moral hazard occurs when the party with more information about its actions or intentions has a tendency or incentive to behave inappropriately from the perspective of the party with less information."
From a practical standpoint, I guess this clears the way for Corzine to be the next Treasury Secretary, a fitting replacement for Geithner the amoral technocrat.
Hide your women, children, IRA's and 401k's. The economic hitmen are coming to town.
As Janet Tavakoli said the other day, the media coverage of this scandal has been a comedic lightweight fly by that no one in the know could possibly take seriously.
And as Chris Whalen said, we always have known where the money ended up. And that is a big part of the problem. Corzine is Too Big to Jail and the Banks are Too Big To Fail.
Perfect illustration of the credibility trap that is destroying the economy.
Now the elite New York Times chimes in with its own version of the mysteriously vaporizing, blameless money meme. Maybe someone should look in Judge Crater's pockets, or Jimmy Hoffa's wallet.
Et tu, Gray Lady?
As I said, I have now given up all hope of justice being done in this case. But I think obtaining some of the stolen customer money back from the banks and MF Global Holdings is still possible.
We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Smells more like 1920's Chicago.
What we need are The Untouchables, honest public servants not compromised in the web of a credibility trap.
NYT
Doubtful Signs of a Criminal Case Against MF Global
By AZAM AHMED and BEN PROTESS
February 28, 2012, 8:45 pm
Federal authorities are struggling to find evidence to support a criminal case stemming from the collapse of MF Global, even after a federal grand jury in Chicago has issued subpoenas.
Investigators, unable to find a smoking gun amid thousands of e-mails and documents, increasingly suspect that chaos and poor risk control systems prompted the disappearance of more than $1 billion in customer money, according to several people involved in the case. (Are these the emails that the lawyer for the Creditors in the bankrputcy case had sole possession of for months? Vaporization by honest sloppiness - Jesse)
When the money first went missing, prosecutors in New York and Chicago scrambled to stake a claim. Now, four months later, both Preet S. Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, his counterpart in Chicago, are shying away from leading the case, one of those people involved in the case said.
Indeed, a number of federal prosecutors have expressed doubts to others involved in the case that anyone at MF Global — including the firm’s chief executive, Jon S. Corzine, and back-office employees in Chicago — intentionally misused customer money, said people involved in the case who were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.
The subpoenas by the grand jury in Chicago were disclosed by the CME Group, MF Global’s chief regulator, in a securities filing on Tuesday. But the grand jury, according to the person involved in the case, has yet to hear any evidence on the case — a sign that the investigation has yet to bear fruit.
Still, it is early in the investigation, and regulators and others have yet to finish plowing through the mountain of documentation they recently received from the company. (And what investigative principle suggests the wisdom of allowing the company to go over the evidence first before handing it over to the investigators? - Jesse) In addition, authorities have yet to interview key witnesses — including a person who is believed to have transferred client funds in the firm’s final days.
The inability to bring a criminal case would certainly disappoint thousands of clients, including farmers, traders and hedge fund managers, who are still without access to at least a third of their money.
The government is still hopeful it can file a civil suit against the company, people close to the case said, though doing so against a bankrupt firm with a long line of creditors could be seen as more symbolic than substantive.
Such a case would most likely center on the firm’s failure to safeguard client money, a cardinal sin in the world of futures firms. The penalty for improperly dipping into customer money is a roughly $140,000 fine, equal to about a thousandth of the overall shortfall that clients are enduring....
Read the rest here.
