Authored by Danielle DiMartino Booth, former adviser to Dallas Fed's Dick Fisher
Volcker, Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen.
Which one does not belong? Logic dictates that Volcker should have been odd man out. After all, there is no legendary “Volcker Put.”
Gold and Silver Are Manipulated
Deutsche Bank admitted today that it participated with other big banks in manipulating gold and silver prices.
In 2014, Switzerland’s financial regulator (FINMA) found “serious misconduct” and a “clear attempt to manipulate precious metals benchmarks” by UBS employees in precious metals trading, particularly with silver. Reuters reported:
Just over four years ago, on March 23, 2012, every HFT's favorite exchange (because it specifically affords them a look at incoming order flow as described by Michael Lewis in Flash Boys), BATS Global Markets, IPOed at a price of $16/share (the low end of the range), valuing the company at around $760 million. However, it was not the pricing that was memorable, but what happened later that day when the stock tried to break for trading. As we reported back then, after its first print at $15.75, the stock proceeded to collapse to just above $0 in about 900 milliseconds.
Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
Retail-Less
Despite all of the cheering by the mainstream media that the economy is “doing great” and “no recession” in sight, a look at small business sales trends and retail sales certainly suggest a very different story.
A recurring oil market theme in the past few months has been the speculation that despite its jawboning that it is ready and willing to boost crude production, Iran has had a hard time getting both the funding and the required infrastructure to substantially boost its production to recapture its supply levels last seen before the recent US sanctions. That however appears to be changing fast.
Recall all those tankers we have profiled before on anchor next to the Iran shore?
They have finally started to move.