Gold/Silver investors beware

Gold, silver, copper or aluminium investor? Think you've seen major price action already this past 12 months?

Well, you ain't seen nuthin yet!

Why? - because NYMEX has just announced that, effective Sunday 4th June for electronic trading and Monday 5th June for the pit-traded contracts, the COMEX division will operate WITHOUT price fluctuation limits. That's right WITHOUT PRICE FLUCTUATION LIMITS!

The NYMEX statement went on to say:

"This change was made in order to better facilitate the core functions of price discovery and hedging provided by COMEX products,"

Oh! is THAT what it's for? I see.

Hmmm. After 3 no-notice increases to margin requirements for silver this year, together with startling physical inventory movements in both silver and gold - plus price increases which are hurting - I mean REALLY hurting the enormous 'establishment' short position in the PM's. Something is clearly afoot. TPTB are clearing the decks; so if you dabble in PM futures, you'd better watch out.

Call me a cynic but the most likely reason that I can see is to facilitate further 'orderly' unwinding of the Silver/Gold carry trades with a little coordinated help from TPTB. Expect wondges of selling (backed by offical physical holdings materialising from wherever), resulting in collapsing prices, allowing the shorts to buy back at bearable losses; pushing prices back up again - and so on.

If you like trading volatility, that IMHO is what you're going to get from next week on - for a while - and there's likely to be serious coordination between London, Tokio (remember that rule change on naming open interests a couple of months back?) and NY too.

Novices beware!