Building metal inventories illegal?

Discussion in 'Commodity Futures' started by Daal, Nov 27, 2006.

  1. Any thoughts as to why where they unable to corner the market?

    What was their billion dollar mistake?
     
    #11     Nov 28, 2006
  2. REDDEC

    REDDEC

    nothing, exchanges and gov't fucked them over. there only mistake was they should have stopped buying and unloaded a good amount of there position after they made more than 10x there investments. same thing happened to soros in 99 his stock positions were up some 1200% what was he looking for 1500%. thats almost as bad as the people who go to the sportsbook and and bet the favorite on the moneyline when the line is -900. they will lay $900 to $100 if you have $900 why do you need to risk it to make just a $100. people get stupid when they get greedy or they actually think there ego's can write checks from an account with unlimited funds for the rest of there lives!!
     
    #12     Nov 28, 2006
  3. Daal

    Daal

    Markets are driven by supply and demand, if you(as part of the market) and decide that you will buy or sell something in the process and makes a profit why is that different from a bigger group people based on their research decidig to buy or sell something and make a profit in the process?
    Why is immoral for one person to do it but it is moral when a bigger group does it?
    To me it seems some kind of collectivist thinking made this practice illegal. Now if the main focus is market stability that would be fine, but the people who come out against 'cornering' almost always like to point out that only one person(or company) is profiting and so therefore it has to be wrong
     
    #13     Nov 28, 2006
  4. countries do it all the time. Russia did it a few years ago with the nickel market.

    From what I understand this is how they did it.

    70% of the nickel market is supplied by france and canada. - their nickel is high quality and it never gets to sit in inventories for too long, it goes straight to factories. Russia's nickel on the other hand is not so good quality and it sits in warehouses for long periods of time.
    In futures markets the price is not set by the highest quality product, it's set by the lower quality product that sits in the warehouses for a long time. Just like the coffee or coccoa that you'll find in the NYMEX warehouses is almost beyond consumption... is not about quality is about volume.

    So the amount of nickel acummulated on russian warehouses has a huge effect on the price.

    What did the russians do?
    Put the nickel on submarines, take it for a 3 month ride, make the market think there's a shortage of nickel and start selling future contracts on it. A few months later they put it back on the warehouses... suddenly the warehouses are full again, there's way too much nickel... the price drops, they buy. Make a few Rubbles in the process...
     
    #14     Nov 28, 2006

  5. good one!
     
    #15     Nov 28, 2006
  6. Daal

    Daal

    I dont think so. You can't fool people forever, the credibility of data coming from russia would go down by a bunch if they kept trying to mislead people. markets aren't perfect but they are not stupid either
     
    #16     Nov 28, 2006
  7. LOL! Credibility! Data! Russia! hahaha....three words that do not belong in the same zip code together.
     
    #17     Nov 28, 2006
  8. true. I wonder if they could pull something like that on the Natural Gas market, now that they are a leade producer...
     
    #18     Nov 29, 2006
  9. You have to wonder about the country when Russia locks out russian speaking american hedge fund managers from the country. hermitage capital is a case on point
     
    #19     Nov 29, 2006
  10. I think speculation is hoarding. When price increases I might buy. I hold until price begins declining. Many speculators might work together, communicating in a sense using the price graph. In total the amount of metal, commodity or security owned by speculatiors during a period of rising prices might be substantial.

    In some parts of the world speculation might be illegal. I think it is important to take money out of a foreign country. A foreign government might restrict the currency if there is a big change in prices.
     
    #20     Nov 29, 2006