All the TBTF banks need is a pause in the speculator’s buying and a little good news (bad for gold). Ideally, the active contract will be running into maturity, so the speculators are forced to put up or shut up: in other words, sell the contract, roll it into another later maturity, or stand for delivery.
Bearing in mind these speculators are running highly leveraged positions, greed turns to fear on a sixpence. The TBTF banks will have supplied the speculators with their longs by going short. From the moment you go long, you are trapped in a trader’s version of Hotel California.
The TBTFs start off sitting on losses, not worrying for them, being TBTF. But they know how to turn it around. Just pick a quiet moment, sell a few billions-worth of contracts, and take out all those stops. It is a cycle of events that happens time after time, a money machine for the bullion banks. Just occasionally, it goes wrong, because the physical markets take back control of pricing away from futures markets. But what the heck, these guys will be bailed out by the Fed, or the Bank of England. Meanwhile their traders have made bonuses quarter after quarter.
Speculators fall for it every time. Sooner or later, they argue, the TBTF traders will get their comeuppance. But now that gold has risen $140 in less than two months, we are due for another rinse cycle in the Comex washing machine. Gold is as overbought as it has ever been. The punters are due to be cleaned out again. Only a fool would bet otherwise. But, this time it just might be different.
For this time to be different, the dollar will have to continue to weaken. Not much else can save the bulls from the TBTF bullion banks. This article discusses the prospects for the dollar, and concludes that, other than a technical rally in the short-term, the prospects for the dollar are not good.
There are four fronts opening that could drive the dollar down: the stagnating US economy, oil producer nations discarding the dollar, the interests of China moving towards abandoning the dollar, and lastly, the commercial interests of the major bullion banks shifting towards the China story. We shall consider each in turn.
