By David B. Collum

Precious metals were in a Utopian bull market for almost a decade. The early bulls lounged poolside, taking the occasional dip and enjoying returns in the high teens. It was a leisurely path to wealth. Predictably, the speculators showed up, a few at first but then in number, forcing repeated chlorine charges of the pool. The high frequency traders began playing digital Marco Polo, causing raucous turbulence. Now the market is anything but leisurely. I miss the sane days when only crazy people bought gold.

The volatility, however, is not just the traders. There were some serious shenanigans at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). They are charged with maintaining orderly markets, but apparently fell waaaay behind the curve. Five margin hikes on silver in eight days isn’t orderly; it’s a drive-by shooting. Just days later, the new Shanghai metals exchange jumped in with its own margin hike, triggering a 15% flash crash. Mysterious put buying on low volume in the wee hours of the morning while most of Asia was on extended vacation elicited serious gold sell offs. To ensure that commodity traders across the board got the memo, 60 million barrels of oil were released from the strategic petroleum reserve for no apparent reason. (Does anybody believe that actual oil entered the market place?) The message was clear: metals and commodity bulls will be dealt with severely. Those without a position in metals are braying that the bull market is over and have been energized by recent precipitous drops. Others see the margin hikes as an effort to allow an orderly retreat for big-money shorts. There may have been some serious collateral damage, however. I suspect that some of MF Global’s problems may have started from this forced selling.

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