Silver Price Suppression

This paper is written as a response to market observers who opine, “how can the price of precious metals be suppressed when their prices have empirically gone up 4 fold and more over the past 10 years?” When we juxtapose Q3/2010 precious metals aggregates against Q4/2010 – we can see that J.P. Morgue and HSBC cumulatively added roughly 4 billion... Read more...

JPMorgan’s Dimon slams CFTC on Swaps Crackdown

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of Wall Street giant JPMorgan Chase, lashed out at efforts by U.S. regulators to police the $600 trillion swaps market, in which his bank is a big player. New regulations being implemented by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, mandated under 2010′s Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, “would damage America,”... Read more...

CFTC Proposes Open Swaps Clearing for Small Banks

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved a proposed rule to force the world’s largest banks to offer swaps clearing services to smaller firms, a change that would promote competition in the $615 trillion market. The proposed rule comes after an industry group of more than 20 mid-size brokers such as Jefferies & Co., Imperial Capital LLC... Read more...

MBIA Reports $213 Million Third-Quarter Net Loss on Derivatives Contracts

MBIA Inc., the bond insurer seeking to jumpstart its business of guaranteeing municipal debt, reported a $213 million net loss in the third quarter on a change in the value of derivatives contracts that reduced an accounting benefit. The loss of $1.06 a share in the three months ended in September narrowed from $728 million, or $3.50 a share a year... Read more...

Chi-East Dark Pool Marks Test Case For Asia

The launch today of a pan-Asian independent dark pool represents an important test case for the region, according to market watchers, as European trading venues and broker-dealers look east for expansion opportunities. Chi-East, a joint venture between Chi-X Global and the Singapore Stock Exchange, took the equities market by storm when it was unveiled... Read more...

Silver Margin Change

There’s been a lot of buzz about today’s price action in gold and silver.  Beginning with the Monday push upwards based on the Zoellick op-ed in the Financial Times, the market surged upward through most of the day today and then hit a serious air pocket with gold falling 2% and silver falling almost 5% in a short period of time late in... Read more...

Ex-Goldman Trader Exposes JPMorgan, HSBC In Latest Silver Price Manipulation Class Action Lawsuit

Just as in fraudclosure, the PM manipulation lawsuits are now coming daily… Soon – hourly. From the just filed lawsuit by Eric Nalven, which references Andrew Maguire’s series of whistleblowing emails: “In connection with its acquisition of Bear Stearns in March 2008, defendant JPMorgan acquired massive short positions in the... Read more...

CFTC Rules Point to Crackdown on Manipulation

Two proposed regulations published by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) clarify its power to take enforcement action in cases of market manipulation and are intended to lead to a tougher regulatory regime in future. The Commission is giving effect to the sweeping provisions of Section 753 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer... Read more...

Bank of America, PNC Unload $8.3 Billion of BlackRock Shares

BlackRock Inc. stakeholders Bank of America Corp. and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. sold $8.3 billion of stock in the New York-based investment firm, the biggest public offering in the U.S. this year. The banks, BlackRock’s two largest investors, sold a combined 51.1 million shares at $163 each, the company said yesterday in a statement. The secondary... Read more...

JP Morgan to Face SEC Probe Over CDO Transaction

The massive explosion that was the bursting of the housing bubble has left a toxic cloud that still hasn’t blown away.  On Monday, a report of an SEC investigation targeting J.P. Morgan over the creation of a complex mortgage instrument echoed the Abacus investigation where Goldman Sachs paid a record $550 million settlement fine.  J.P. Morgan stock,... Read more...

Europe Sovereign CDS Index at New High

The cost of insuring the bonds of developed European sovereign borrowers using a benchmark credit default swap index hit a fresh all-time high Monday, driven by continued weakness in peripheral euro-zone sovereigns. The iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which allows investors to buy or sell default protection on a basket of 15 sovereign borrowers, rose... Read more...

Goldman, Natixis Fight Over Default Swaps Deal Heads to Trial in London

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will ask a London court to prevent Natixis SA from terminating bond protection it sold to Goldman at a trial beginning today. The U.S. bank’s London unit, Goldman Sachs International, sued Natixis in July to stop the termination of three credit- default swaps with a potential value of around $530 million. Natixis, a unit of... Read more...

Ambac Files for Chapter 11

Ambac Financial Group has just filed for Chapter 11, using a filing which is so fresh it even forgot to lock the input forms (see attached). The case is 10-15973 in Southern District of New York. The actual filing is not surprising, as we noted earlier that Ambac was likely going to file imminently. What is also not surprising is that the form 1, erroneously,... Read more...

World Bank Chief Calls on G-20 to Reconsider Gold Standard

In a commentary published in Monday’s Financial Times, World Bank President Robert Zoellick wrote that an updated gold standard could help retool the world economy amid tensions over currencies and the United States’ monetary policy. Looking ahead to this week’s meeting of the Group of 20 (G-20) nations in Seoul, the former US trade... Read more...

Computer Glitches Hit Several Banks Saturday

Computer problems at banks including Wells Fargo and Bank of America kept some customers from being able to access all of their account information at times on Saturday. A few Wells Fargo branches in Orange County reported problems, with several tellers saying it was part of a national outage. Problems reported by customers there including not being... Read more...

Is an ATM Cash Shortage Coming?

While we have no way to confirm or refute the validity of this statement presented by a supposed ATM business insider on Steve Quayle.com, it does bring up an interesting point regarding how banks may be conserving “petty cash.” Of course, if this perspective is true, it validates concerns about bank capitalization, and explains the reason... Read more...

Draft Changes Muddy Future of Dark Pools

The European Commission is reviewing the rules governing trading in dark pools in which stock prices are not displayed. An amendment to a July draft report by British MEP Kay Swinburne – who has been reviewing dark pools and other market practices – has removed the proposed threshold above which private broker-run pools of liquidity would be required... Read more...

China Rejects ‘Naked Swimming’ with Default Swaps

The first yuan-denominated credit- default swaps insuring bonds and loans were signed today as China experiments with derivatives blamed by some European and U.S. officials for exacerbating the global financial crisis. Nine financial institutions, including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and Deutsche Bank AG as well as state-backed China... Read more...

Malaysia’s Bursa Derivatives to Start Accepting Yuan as Margin Collateral

Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Berhad, which sets the global benchmark for crude palm oil, will start accepting Chinese yuan as margin collateral for trading in the Malaysian derivatives market, Yusli Mohamed Yusoff, chief executive officer of the bourse, said today. Read more about derivatives…  Read More →

CFTC Commissioner ‘Disappointed’ with CME Group

A top Washington regulator has launched a scathing attack on the CME Group, the US’s biggest futures exchange, for refusing to co-operate in the introduction of position limits in futures markets. Bart Chilton, one of the five commissioners of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US futures watchdog, told the FT he had been left “frustrated... Read more...

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