Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - CFTC Finally Does Something About Market Manipulation

Intraday commentary about that very clumsy Dr. Evil style hit on the open of the gold market here.

Speaking of the CFTC, it appears that those fine fellows have finally done something about the obvious and blatant manipulation that all too often plagues the futures markets in commodities.

That's right, the CFTC is joining a defense motion to dimiss the $30 million fine levied against the Amaranth trader who was caught manipulating the natural gas market. Why?

Because the CFTC and the trader's defense attorneys contend that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should not be investigating market manipulation in futures, because not doing anything about it is within the jurisidction of the CFTC.

Hey, nobody can touch our crooks but us, and we're too busy and understaffed to do it. Now that's industry friendly!

Ex-Amaranth Trader, CFTC Unite to Ask Court to Toss Fine
By Tom Schoenberg & Brian Wingfield
Feb 7, 2013

A former natural-gas trader at Amaranth Advisors LLC, backed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, asked a federal appeals court to overturn a $30 million fine imposed by another regulator over alleged manipulation of the gas-futures market.

In a case that could determine the limits of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s power to punish market manipulation, a lawyer for Brian Hunter told a three-judge panel in Washington today that the CFTC has sole jurisdiction over futures trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The CFTC, which filed papers supporting Hunter, also argued today.

“There was no notice, much less fair notice, to Brian Hunter that his conduct was being regulated by FERC,” Hunter’s lawyer, Michael Kim of Kobre & Kim LLP, said during the 40- minute argument.

The dispute highlights FERC’s growing role as a regulatory enforcer. Congress beefed up the agency’s powers in 2005 to ensure order in the energy trading markets after Enron Corp. traders triggered California blackouts earlier in the decade. Since January 2011, the commission has publicly disclosed 13 investigations it has conducted of alleged market manipulation....

Read the rest here.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Holding Up the Market

Maybe they can prop this pig up until option expiration next week, or even go for another bubble until Sequestration Come.

Dear Mr. Chilton, RE the Gold Market In NY This Morning

"If you follow issues like Too-Big-To-Fail or Wall Street corruption long enough, you realize that the reason things don't get done about them by our government has very little to do with ideology or even politics, in the way most of us understand politics.

Instead, it's a bizarre, almost tribal mentality that rules our capital city – a kind of groupthink that makes extreme myopia and a willingness to ignore the tribe's ostensible connection to the people who elected them a condition for social advancement within."

Matt Taibbi, Neil Barofsky's Adventure in Groupthink

Personally I think this is the corrosive influence of the credibility trap, the amorality of careerism, and of course, an ambivalence towards white collar corruption as the inherent entitlement of privilege.  There seems to have been a shift in perspective amongst the new ruling class from noblesse oblige to droit du seigneur.   This is what Robert Johnson calls 'the audacious oligarchy.'

While it is recovering much of this sudden, five minute loss even now, with spot back to 1680 already, the hit on the gold market in the New York trade this morning was fairly blatant.

Perhaps it was just some innocent who had the desire to drop a boatload of contracts into a quiet market, and knock the price down while maximizing their selling loss.  Or another 'fat finger' mishap, which seem to happen quite a bit around option expiration for example.

Or perhaps it was some wiseguy trader who looked at the market, having some advantageous insight into the order books, and decided to 'run the stops.'

Thank God the US has the CFTC, whose job it is to look at this sort of thing and to tell us whether it was legitimate, or not.

And we should hear back about this, perhaps as early as January, 2017. And maybe even sooner on this one: 24 Tonnes of Paper Gold Dumped at Market

But it is nice to see that the CFTC is doing something. They are asking the court to overturn the $30 million fine on the Amaranth trader who was caught manipulating the natural gas market, because another regulator did their job for them.

And how is that MF Global investigation going by the way?

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

There is some serious coiling going on in these markets, and sentiment seems very discouraged.

As it stands now, I find the gold chart to be exceptionally interesting.  I think we might see something for the technical analysis books developing here.

Here is what Louise Yamada has to say about gold and silver.