@dcarr said:
Insider trading (like Martha Stewart) is illegal. But that exact same activity would be legal if performed by an elected member of Congress.
Martha Stewart lied and obstructed an investigation. The Supreme Court has ruled that "insider trading" is legal if it does NOT involve material non-public information and/or no fiduciary duty has been breached.
Martha Stewart received horrible legal advice and representation. All she had to do is say "my broker told me I should sell, so I did". That likely would have ended the whole legal proceedings before they even started.
According to the "Stock Act" of 2012, members of Congress are only subject to fines and not any criminal penalty for insider trading. But cases of inside information are difficult to prove and the SEC does not think Congress has a duty of confidentiality for information they come across as part of their job. And Congress members likely have immunity from prosecution due to the Constitution's speech or debate clause: https://nbcnews.com/politics/congress/it-illegal-lawmakers-trade-stocks-insider-info-they-learn-job-n1165156
So, basically, the SEC view is that any information that Congress people learn during the course of their job is, by definition, "public" information, even if it has not been reported in the press.
Note that the two Federal Reserve Bank presidents that resigned over their personal financial transactions were never charged with "insider trading".
Many see. Few understand. Then there are the ostriches who bury their head in the sand , out of fear.
In the meantime, have you added to your stack, lately ?
@dcarr said:
Insider trading (like Martha Stewart) is illegal. But that exact same activity would be legal if performed by an elected > member of Congress.
Because it IS legal. Congress may ban it for their members, but it is NOT illegal in the public domain absent a Congressional self-imposed ban.
It's not even close. No DA or AG would bring a suit. It's perfectly legal.
Martha Stewart lied and obstructed an investigation. The Supreme Court has ruled that "insider trading" is legal if > it does NOT involve material non-public information and/or no fiduciary duty has been breached.
She lied, not sure she obstructed.
The activities that Bernie Madoff engaged in were regulated. He was a "regulated" financial entity. But there were >gaping holes in the enforcement of said regulations that allowed the ponzi scheme to go on:
The "regulation" was minimal RIA reporting. I passed by his accountant behind my bagel store. If he were a bank or brokerage firm, the regulation was light-years higher.
Martha Stewart received horrible legal advice and representation. All she had to do is say "my broker told me I >should sell, so I did". That likely would have ended the whole legal proceedings before they even started.
She got nailed on perjury/lying, not insider trading.
According to the "Stock Act" of 2012, members of Congress are only subject to fines and not any criminal penalty > >for insider trading. But cases of inside information are difficult to prove and the SEC does not think Congress has a > >duty of confidentiality for information they come across as part of their job. And Congress members likely have >immunity from prosecution due to the Constitution's speech or debate clause
Yes, fines because it is self-imposed. No criminal penalty -- SCOTUS already struck it down (DIRKS vs. SEC).
So, basically, the SEC view is that any information that Congress people learn during the course of their job is, by > > definition, "public" information, even if it has not been reported in the press.
Not necessarily. The SEC has traditionally taken a RESTRICTIVE view of insider trading -- they wanted Ray Dirks thrown in jail and punished. The SCOTUS outranks the SEC and they said "Not So Fast."
Note that the two Federal Reserve Bank presidents that resigned over their personal financial transactions were > >never charged with "insider trading".
Because it wasn't "insider trading" and it probably wasn't even GOOD trading. But they ran afoul of generally accepted protocol which I think should be scrapped anyway.
The amounts for each were de minimus: very small relative to their net worths. If Warren Buffet or Elon Musk worked for the U.S. government and did a trade that involved a few million dollars, we'd think it ridiculous that they cared about the trade or used illegal means to generate a puny reward for guys worth $100 billion or more.
@dcarr said:
Note that the two Federal Reserve Bank presidents that resigned over their personal financial transactions were > >never charged with "insider trading".
Because it wasn't "insider trading" and it probably wasn't even GOOD trading. But they ran afoul of generally accepted protocol which I think should be scrapped anyway.
The amounts for each were de minimus: very small relative to their net worths. If Warren Buffet or Elon Musk worked for the U.S. government and did a trade that involved a few million dollars, we'd think it ridiculous that they cared about the trade or used illegal means to generate a puny reward for guys worth $100 billion or more.
You think the "generally accepted protocol" should be scrapped ? I suppose you think it should be replaced with nothing ?
Loosening the rules on trading by members and employees of Congress, and Federal Reserve Governors and staff, would rig the game even more against the ordinary investors.
@dcarr said:
You think the "generally accepted protocol" should be scrapped ? I suppose you think it should be replaced with >nothing ? > Loosening the rules on trading by members and employees of Congress, and Federal Reserve > > >Governors and staff, would rig the game even more against the ordinary investors.
There was no material non-public information or breach of fiduciary duty in either case. The Fed sets its own rules as a condition of employment, that is a SEPARATE matter.
@dcarr said:
You think the "generally accepted protocol" should be scrapped ? I suppose you think it should be replaced with >nothing ? > Loosening the rules on trading by members and employees of Congress, and Federal Reserve > > >Governors and staff, would rig the game even more against the ordinary investors.
There was no material non-public information or breach of fiduciary duty in either case. The Fed sets its own rules as a condition of employment, that is a SEPARATE matter.
The Fed sets its own rules, and lax they are (just the way they like them).
What the two Fed Governors did was not necessarily against their rules, but it wasn't right and it looked bad to the public.
If members ofCongress haven't been involved in insider trading, how is it that Congress is now considering the banning of insider trading for members of Congress?
Q: Are You Printing Money? Bernanke: Not Literally
@dcarr said:
The Fed sets its own rules, and lax they are (just the way they like them).
What the two Fed Governors did was not necessarily against their rules, but it wasn't right and it looked bad to the public.
Sure, the corrupt lying media elite made a big thing out of it. At the same time, Congress and the President gave the corrupt Teamsters CSPF $36,000,000,000 with no payback of the $$$...nobody fired...nobody indicted....pension fraud that dwarfs anything the founder of CSPF, Jimmy Hoffa, ever did.
But sure....go after the guy who made $150,000 that month and ended up losing millions in retrospect.
You're like the cop who goes after the guy for jay walking while the bank robbers up the street get off scott-free.
@jmski52 said:
If members ofCongress haven't been involved in insider trading, how is it that Congress is now considering the banning of insider trading for members of Congress?
It's ALL trading they are proposing. Let them define "insider trading" and then I'll comment on it.
I don't believe that members of Congress come into MNPI except during times of financial or economic crisis. Or if a specific spending bill is acted on with information that is not public (i.e., the awarding of a defense contract that has a surprise in it).
@dcarr said:
The Fed sets its own rules, and lax they are (just the way they like them).
What the two Fed Governors did was not necessarily against their rules, but it wasn't right and it looked bad to the public.
Sure, the corrupt lying media elite made a big thing out of it. At the same time, Congress and the President gave the corrupt Teamsters CSPF $36,000,000,000 with no payback of the $$$...nobody fired...nobody indicted....pension fraud that dwarfs anything the founder of CSPF, Jimmy Hoffa, ever did.
But sure....go after the guy who made $150,000 that month and ended up losing millions in retrospect.
You're like the cop who goes after the guy for jay walking while the bank robbers up the street get off scott-free.
.
So the entire media is corrupt and lying but none of the banker's are ?
@dcarr said:
So the entire media is corrupt and lying but none of the banker's are ?
I didn't say all of the media OR none of the bankers. I said there was misinformation and disinformation and the media attention given to the $36 billion bailout -- er, giveaway -- proves it.
You keep talking about corrupt bankers -- the corrupt ones went Chapter 11.
Worry more about corrupt union and government officials pandering to special interests with OPM -- Other People's Money.
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
The problem is that silver can be recycled....there are some big silver projects coming on-stream in 2024 and 2025....and EV rollouts are getting slowed.
@jmski52 said:
The corrupt bankers are the ones given free reign to poof “money” into existence. Anyone else who does that and >gets caught goes to prison. The debt-based monetary system is a scam by tptb, and it has always been a scam. It’s >one root cause of the many problems that we face as a society.
Proves my point...he wasn't a regulated bank or investment firm. He was on his own.
BS. He was poorly regulated by the SEC.
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
@percyb said:
He had a firm with his name on it. Madoff Investment Security LLC.
That's not the issue. The CLEARING firm is key. If I manage money for clients and clear through Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, they vouch for the positions. If you get a statement that I have $1 MM in APPL stock in an account they oversee, if I engage in fraud, they are on the hook. They verify that the assets -- cash, bonds, and stocks -- are in fact in the account.
If I clear through a firm I control, you are at my mercy if I am a thief. That is what happened with Madoff: he self-cleared and a tiny accountant vereified/audited the accounts. No way GS or JPM lets a 1-man shop over a bagel store be the CPA (BTW, I know the bagel place as it was 4 miles from my home).
@jmski52 said:
It was widely reported years ago. What makes you think that anything has changed?
As I recall, the operant word for their clients used by GS traders was “guppies”.
1 or 2 rogue morons doing it is one thing. The firm would be insane to risk their reputation -- they'd lose all their institutional and HNW business, the lifeblood of the firm.
@jmski52 said:
It was widely reported years ago. What makes you think that anything has changed?
As I recall, the operant word for their clients used by GS traders was “guppies”.
1 or 2 rogue morons doing it is one thing. The firm would be insane to risk their reputation -- they'd lose all their institutional and HNW business, the lifeblood of the firm.
.
So first you claim that Goldman Sachs didn't "front-run" their customers' trades and that it would be "ignorant" to think that they did.
But now you admit that "rouge" Goldman Sachs traders did exactly that. So who is really the "ignorant" person here ?
Front-running is not the only scheme that Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms use to line their pockets. Intentionally failing to actually borrow the equities for a customer's short position is another.
New York Times said:
More recently, a Goldman executive named Greg Smith resigned from the firm and wrote a scathing Op-Ed article in The Times. Mr. Smith contended in his open letter to the firm’s top management that its culture had become toxic and that it had placed its own interests ahead of its customers’. Goldman denied the claims and contended that its customers came first.
@dcarr said:
So first you claim that Goldman Sachs didn't "front-run" their customers' trades and that it would be "ignorant" to >think that they did.
But now you admit that "rouge" Goldman Sachs traders did exactly that. So who is really the "ignorant" person >here?
A few knuckleheads is different than a FIRM-WIDE POLICY which is what you are implying.
How much volume in equity and bond trading did GS do that year and how much did their front-runners do ? I doubt it amounted to more than 0.01%. So the firm is 99.99% legit and you want to smear them ?
@jmski52 said:
They also use “spoofing” with High Frequency Trading to game the market by triggering stops and then pulling their bids to test resistance levels.
But, but……..management knew nothing about it. Uh huh.
Spoofing is illegal in most circumstances aside from price discovery on illiquid NMS trades. This goes back to the SOES Bandits of the 1990's. This is a complex issue that is not as simple as you make it out to be. Many times, the firm's proprietary trading desk has positions at odds with the firm's own capital investments. For instance, Goldman Sachs prop desk was short MBS in 2007-08....but the firm's Alpha Fund which had the assets of the top executives was LONG the stuff !!!
Again, you are trying an analogy like this: some American people are murderers.....all Americans are people.....all Americans are murderers.
You act as if HFT doesn’t exist to gain an unfair advantage over the “guppies” and that management is somehow unaware of the planning & costs involved in its implementation.
Your “interpretation” is ridiculous and over the top.
Q: Are You Printing Money? Bernanke: Not Literally
@jmski52 said:
You act as if HFT doesn’t exist to gain an unfair advantage over the “guppies” and that management is somehow > >unaware of the planning & costs involved in its implementation.
Your “interpretation” is ridiculous and over the top.
HFT is perfectly legal. Many hedge funds employ it, BDs are subject to more restrictions.
Renaissance Technologies and Citadel both do HFT. Lots of others do too, but not anywhere near as successfully.
@dcarr said:
So first you claim that Goldman Sachs didn't "front-run" their customers' trades and that it would be "ignorant" to >think that they did.
But now you admit that "rouge" Goldman Sachs traders did exactly that. So who is really the "ignorant" person >here?
A few knuckleheads is different than a FIRM-WIDE POLICY which is what you are implying.
How much volume in equity and bond trading did GS do that year and how much did their front-runners do ? I doubt it amounted to more than 0.01%. So the firm is 99.99% legit and you want to smear them ?
Be better, Dcarr.
You chose the word "knuckleheads" to describe them, apparently using a humorous descriptor to lessen the impact. It is not funny in the least. I would describe them as "thieves" because they stole money from Goldman Sachs' clients.
Just because someone has an opposing opinion to yours doesn't mean you should call them "ignorant" or "conspirational to the Nth degree" as you have been doing.
HFT is legal only because the regulators are captured and won’t go against the grain of their benefactors in the large banks & hedge funds. In other countries, this is called an Interlocking Directorate between corporate boards of directors and the most influential families.
HFT is just another tool being used to fleece the unwary - it’s unethical and wrong, but that doesn’t seem to bother our big bank apologist. Citadel spent big money to locate their tower strategically near the CBOE just to gain a couple of milliseconds so that they, and their clients can front run and spoof the market to their own advantage. It’s way beyond the work of a couple of rogue traders (or knuckleheads) - and EVERYBODY knows it.
The stock market and commodities markets have been manipulated for decades, but even that is peanuts compared to what the Fed & our “legislators” have managed to pull off in the bond market & government finance.
None of it is honest, or sustainable.
Q: Are You Printing Money? Bernanke: Not Literally
HFT has periodically artificially inflated the price of gutter. Nothing more. Thankfully the market always corrects itself. As some would say; "It's a nothingburger". RGDS!
@percyb said:
He had a firm with his name on it. Madoff Investment Security LLC.
That's not the issue. The CLEARING firm is key. If I manage money for clients and clear through Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, they vouch for the positions. If you get a statement that I have $1 MM in APPL stock in an account they oversee, if I engage in fraud, they are on the hook. They verify that the assets -- cash, bonds, and stocks -- are in fact in the account.
If I clear through a firm I control, you are at my mercy if I am a thief. That is what happened with Madoff: he self-cleared and a tiny accountant vereified/audited the accounts. No way GS or JPM lets a 1-man shop over a bagel store be the CPA (BTW, I know the bagel place as it was 4 miles from my home).
Interesting but not accurate. Madoff LLC was not the clearing house for stock transactions. I think “clearing” is misinterpreted here. Merrill Lynch is a brokerage house as was Madoff. The clearing firm is something else. There’s a National Clearing House that pairs buys and sells.
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." PBShelley
@jmski52 said:
GS wants your money under their control. Front running their clients is much easier that way.
They do make markets in various securities so they do like the orders. The more traffic they receive the better they can gauge taking a long or short position. That’s not what I’d call front running tho.
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." PBShelley
Making markets isn’t the same as using HFT to test resistance levels by placing orders and withdrawing them before they can be executed all within milliseconds before the market can react. It doesn’t matter to them whether you are one of their clients or not. To them, you are a guppy.
Q: Are You Printing Money? Bernanke: Not Literally
@jmski52 said:
Making markets isn’t the same as using HFT to test resistance levels by placing orders and withdrawing them before they can be executed all within milliseconds before the market can react. It doesn’t matter to them whether you are one of their clients or not. To them, you are a guppy.
The MM do buy and sell all day, but not like the HFTers. MMs are required to keep an orderly market. So there’s an inherent always a ploy to attract the paper/order flow so they can do that. There’s not a nefarious angle all the time to the job they do.
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." PBShelley
@percyb said:
Interesting but not accurate. Madoff LLC was not the clearing house for stock transactions. I think “clearing” is misinterpreted here. Merrill Lynch is a brokerage house as was Madoff. The clearing firm is something else. There’s a National Clearing House that pairs buys and sells.
Madoff self-cleared. Otherwise, a clearing firm would have had legal liability for putting out statements with fraudulent positions.
@jmski52 said:
HFT is legal only because the regulators are captured and won’t go against the grain of their benefactors in the large banks & hedge funds. In other countries, this is called an Interlocking Directorate between corporate boards of directors and the most influential families.
Both statements are false and don't even make sense. Only a few firms are using HFT to generate market-beating returns (Renaissance Technologies being the standout).
Some of you people really need to read BARRON'S or The Wall Street Journal on a regular basis.
HFT is just another tool being used to fleece the unwary - it’s unethical and wrong, but that doesn’t seem to bother our big bank apologist. Citadel spent big money to locate their tower strategically near the CBOE just to gain a couple of milliseconds so that they, and their clients can front run and spoof the market to their own advantage. It’s way beyond the work of a couple of rogue traders (or knuckleheads) - and EVERYBODY knows it.
It has nothing to do with small traders and investors. It's the Big Boys fighting among themselves for scraps. Lower prices, greater liquidity benefits small investors.
Look up "SOES Bandits."
The stock market and commodities markets have been manipulated for decades, but even that is peanuts compared to what the Fed & our “legislators” have managed to pull off in the bond market & government finance.
Values out in the long-run. Price manipulation is hard to maintain. Hundreds of large institutions are all acting independently.
You need to read up on markets before you make statements that make you look foolish, honestly.
Back to the OP.....interest rates and the gold price have no direct correlation over longer periods of time. What correlation there is relates to the CHANGE in interest rates from a given level.
1970's: Rates skyrocket over the decade.....hit double-digits in 1980...but gold goes up 20-fold.
1980's & 1990's: Rates decline....gold heads down as inflation ebs.
The outright bs and misdirection by the financial system operatives in this thread are perfect examples of the narrative we are all being force-fed about how the “financial system” works.
Maybe you should do some reading of you own at Mises.org
(Then again, maybe we’re all better off if you don’t.)
Q: Are You Printing Money? Bernanke: Not Literally
@jmski52 said:
The outright bs and misdirection by the financial system operatives in this thread are perfect examples of the narrative we are all being force-fed about how the “financial system” works.
If you are talking about me, I'm no operative, I just know what I am talking about unlike some of the people here who regurgitate nonsense from idiotic websites.
Since there is no market for most of the nonsense being posted in this thread or section, the market will decide who is right and who is wrong.
Maybe you should do some reading of you own at Mises.org
Maybe someone should start an investment fund or hedge fund based on the stuff at Mises.org and put their money where their mouth is ?
Talk is cheap, let's see what happens when Mises.org or other websites have to tell us how their verbiage works in the Real World.
BTW, I actually have read and studied about Ludwig Von Mises and the Austrian School. Nothing wrong with that, but websites in their name are not all on the up-and-up.
@percyb said:
Madoff had its own books as all companies do but like other brokerage firms as well, never cleared trades,
Brokerages don’t clear trades.
Yes, brokerages do clear trades if they have their own clearing operations. For instance, Bank of NY has Pershing.
Whether they do it themselves or outsource it to Pershing, DTC, State Street, etc....all the big Wall Street firms are on the hook if they clear for you. That's my point. If someone had checked and said "Hey, Madoff manages $20 Billion....where are the positions ?" it would have unraveled.
The auditors/CPA firm lied about the "custody of securities" in this SEC action:
My first institutional firm used our clearing through Morgan Stanley as a way to assuage clients in other states who never heard of our tiny firm (hell, people in NY State never heard of us !!). MS guaranteed all positions up to $5 MM in cash and $25 MM in total. For a nomial sum, you could increase those amounts by 10X.
I don't self-clear for the F&F accounts I manage. I use Fidelity. My clients get statements direct from Fidelity. If I sent them the Excel Spreadsheets I use to manage the accounts, I could make up anything.
@jmski52 said:
No need to start a hedge fund based on Mises “stuff”. 100% of my investment assets are in precious metals - zero debt and zero stocks since 2007.
That's a highly speculative portfolio. You're basically speculating on PMs.
I don’t worry about a bond market meltdown, a real estate market meltdown or a stock market crash.
What about the PM crashes we have had ?
15%/70%/15% has worked very well.
Is that your asset allocation with stocks-bonds-cash ? You said above no stocks or bonds, so what are you referring to here ?
Average in, average out - keep detailed tax records on a spreadsheet - works great!
Absolutely no regrets here.
In the end, that is all that matters but it's obvious that if you are 100% in PMs you do not have the returns of balanced stock-bond portfolios over time.
Comments
Are PM bulls worried/concerned/afraid that higher interest rates will squash demand for PMs?
No
My US Mint Commemorative Medal Set
The activities that Bernie Madoff engaged in were regulated. He was a "regulated" financial entity. But there were gaping holes in the enforcement of said regulations that allowed the ponzi scheme to go on:
https://forbes.com/2009/01/27/bernard-madoff-sec-business-wall-street_0127_regulators.html?sh=7b86454c5c28
Martha Stewart received horrible legal advice and representation. All she had to do is say "my broker told me I should sell, so I did". That likely would have ended the whole legal proceedings before they even started.
According to the "Stock Act" of 2012, members of Congress are only subject to fines and not any criminal penalty for insider trading. But cases of inside information are difficult to prove and the SEC does not think Congress has a duty of confidentiality for information they come across as part of their job. And Congress members likely have immunity from prosecution due to the Constitution's speech or debate clause:
https://nbcnews.com/politics/congress/it-illegal-lawmakers-trade-stocks-insider-info-they-learn-job-n1165156
So, basically, the SEC view is that any information that Congress people learn during the course of their job is, by definition, "public" information, even if it has not been reported in the press.
Note that the two Federal Reserve Bank presidents that resigned over their personal financial transactions were never charged with "insider trading".
Many see. Few understand. Then there are the ostriches who bury their head in the sand , out of fear.
In the meantime, have you added to your stack, lately ?
Because it IS legal. Congress may ban it for their members, but it is NOT illegal in the public domain absent a Congressional self-imposed ban.
It's not even close. No DA or AG would bring a suit. It's perfectly legal.
She lied, not sure she obstructed.
The "regulation" was minimal RIA reporting. I passed by his accountant behind my bagel store. If he were a bank or brokerage firm, the regulation was light-years higher.
She got nailed on perjury/lying, not insider trading.
Yes, fines because it is self-imposed. No criminal penalty -- SCOTUS already struck it down (DIRKS vs. SEC).
Not necessarily. The SEC has traditionally taken a RESTRICTIVE view of insider trading -- they wanted Ray Dirks thrown in jail and punished. The SCOTUS outranks the SEC and they said "Not So Fast."
Because it wasn't "insider trading" and it probably wasn't even GOOD trading. But they ran afoul of generally accepted protocol which I think should be scrapped anyway.
The amounts for each were de minimus: very small relative to their net worths. If Warren Buffet or Elon Musk worked for the U.S. government and did a trade that involved a few million dollars, we'd think it ridiculous that they cared about the trade or used illegal means to generate a puny reward for guys worth $100 billion or more.
You think the "generally accepted protocol" should be scrapped ? I suppose you think it should be replaced with nothing ?
Loosening the rules on trading by members and employees of Congress, and Federal Reserve Governors and staff, would rig the game even more against the ordinary investors.
There was no material non-public information or breach of fiduciary duty in either case. The Fed sets its own rules as a condition of employment, that is a SEPARATE matter.
The Fed sets its own rules, and lax they are (just the way they like them).
What the two Fed Governors did was not necessarily against their rules, but it wasn't right and it looked bad to the public.
If members ofCongress haven't been involved in insider trading, how is it that Congress is now considering the banning of insider trading for members of Congress?
I knew it would happen.
Sure, the corrupt lying media elite made a big thing out of it. At the same time, Congress and the President gave the corrupt Teamsters CSPF $36,000,000,000 with no payback of the $$$...nobody fired...nobody indicted....pension fraud that dwarfs anything the founder of CSPF, Jimmy Hoffa, ever did.
But sure....go after the guy who made $150,000 that month and ended up losing millions in retrospect.
You're like the cop who goes after the guy for jay walking while the bank robbers up the street get off scott-free.
It's ALL trading they are proposing. Let them define "insider trading" and then I'll comment on it.
I don't believe that members of Congress come into MNPI except during times of financial or economic crisis. Or if a specific spending bill is acted on with information that is not public (i.e., the awarding of a defense contract that has a surprise in it).
.
So the entire media is corrupt and lying but none of the banker's are ?
.
I didn't say all of the media OR none of the bankers. I said there was misinformation and disinformation and the media attention given to the $36 billion bailout -- er, giveaway -- proves it.
You keep talking about corrupt bankers -- the corrupt ones went Chapter 11.
Worry more about corrupt union and government officials pandering to special interests with OPM -- Other People's Money.
Not worried.
Green energy requires substantially more silver than is being mined right now.
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
The problem is that silver can be recycled....there are some big silver projects coming on-stream in 2024 and 2025....and EV rollouts are getting slowed.
People want Teslas, not EVs.
The corrupt bankers are the ones given free reign to poof “money” into existence. Anyone else who does that and gets caught goes to prison.
The debt-based monetary system is a scam by tptb, and it has always been a scam. It’s one root cause of the many problems that we face as a society.
I knew it would happen.
I want a Tesla like I want a bloody hemorrhoid.
I'd rather pedal one of these:
https://kronfeldmotors.com/
Let us know how things are in Bartersville !!
Buddy, can you spare a 10-year treasury for a cup of coffee?
I knew it would happen.
He had a firm with his name on it. Madoff Investment Security LLC.
BS. He was poorly regulated by the SEC.
"Interest rates, the price of money, are the most important market. And, perversely, they’re the market that’s most manipulated by the Fed." - Doug Casey
That's not the issue. The CLEARING firm is key. If I manage money for clients and clear through Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, they vouch for the positions. If you get a statement that I have $1 MM in APPL stock in an account they oversee, if I engage in fraud, they are on the hook. They verify that the assets -- cash, bonds, and stocks -- are in fact in the account.
If I clear through a firm I control, you are at my mercy if I am a thief. That is what happened with Madoff: he self-cleared and a tiny accountant vereified/audited the accounts. No way GS or JPM lets a 1-man shop over a bagel store be the CPA (BTW, I know the bagel place as it was 4 miles from my home).
GS wants your money under their control. Front running their clients is much easier that way.
I knew it would happen.
Do you know how ignorant you sound, making patently false statements like that without a shred of evidence ?
It was widely reported years ago. What makes you think that anything has changed?
As I recall, the operant word for their clients used by GS traders was “guppies”.
I knew it would happen.
In the end, PM bulls don't worry. That is an attribute of the PM bears.
Where is Dave ? " Dave's not here, man."
1 or 2 rogue morons doing it is one thing. The firm would be insane to risk their reputation -- they'd lose all their institutional and HNW business, the lifeblood of the firm.
.
So first you claim that Goldman Sachs didn't "front-run" their customers' trades and that it would be "ignorant" to think that they did.
But now you admit that "rouge" Goldman Sachs traders did exactly that. So who is really the "ignorant" person here ?
Front-running is not the only scheme that Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms use to line their pockets. Intentionally failing to actually borrow the equities for a customer's short position is another.
https://nytimes.com/2012/03/26/business/goldman-sachs-denies-claims-it-led-to-copper-rivers-demise.html
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They also use “spoofing” with High Frequency Trading to game the market by triggering stops and then pulling their bids to test resistance levels.
But, but……..management knew nothing about it. Uh huh.
I knew it would happen.
A few knuckleheads is different than a FIRM-WIDE POLICY which is what you are implying.
How much volume in equity and bond trading did GS do that year and how much did their front-runners do ? I doubt it amounted to more than 0.01%. So the firm is 99.99% legit and you want to smear them ?
Be better, Dcarr.
Spoofing is illegal in most circumstances aside from price discovery on illiquid NMS trades. This goes back to the SOES Bandits of the 1990's. This is a complex issue that is not as simple as you make it out to be. Many times, the firm's proprietary trading desk has positions at odds with the firm's own capital investments. For instance, Goldman Sachs prop desk was short MBS in 2007-08....but the firm's Alpha Fund which had the assets of the top executives was LONG the stuff !!!
Again, you are trying an analogy like this: some American people are murderers.....all Americans are people.....all Americans are murderers.
You act as if HFT doesn’t exist to gain an unfair advantage over the “guppies” and that management is somehow unaware of the planning & costs involved in its implementation.
Your “interpretation” is ridiculous and over the top.
I knew it would happen.
HFT is perfectly legal. Many hedge funds employ it, BDs are subject to more restrictions.
Renaissance Technologies and Citadel both do HFT. Lots of others do too, but not anywhere near as successfully.
You chose the word "knuckleheads" to describe them, apparently using a humorous descriptor to lessen the impact. It is not funny in the least. I would describe them as "thieves" because they stole money from Goldman Sachs' clients.
Just because someone has an opposing opinion to yours doesn't mean you should call them "ignorant" or "conspirational to the Nth degree" as you have been doing.
HFT is legal only because the regulators are captured and won’t go against the grain of their benefactors in the large banks & hedge funds. In other countries, this is called an Interlocking Directorate between corporate boards of directors and the most influential families.
HFT is just another tool being used to fleece the unwary - it’s unethical and wrong, but that doesn’t seem to bother our big bank apologist. Citadel spent big money to locate their tower strategically near the CBOE just to gain a couple of milliseconds so that they, and their clients can front run and spoof the market to their own advantage. It’s way beyond the work of a couple of rogue traders (or knuckleheads) - and EVERYBODY knows it.
The stock market and commodities markets have been manipulated for decades, but even that is peanuts compared to what the Fed & our “legislators” have managed to pull off in the bond market & government finance.
None of it is honest, or sustainable.
I knew it would happen.
HFT has periodically artificially inflated the price of gutter. Nothing more. Thankfully the market always corrects itself. As some would say; "It's a nothingburger". RGDS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
Interesting but not accurate. Madoff LLC was not the clearing house for stock transactions. I think “clearing” is misinterpreted here. Merrill Lynch is a brokerage house as was Madoff. The clearing firm is something else. There’s a National Clearing House that pairs buys and sells.
They do make markets in various securities so they do like the orders. The more traffic they receive the better they can gauge taking a long or short position. That’s not what I’d call front running tho.
Making markets isn’t the same as using HFT to test resistance levels by placing orders and withdrawing them before they can be executed all within milliseconds before the market can react. It doesn’t matter to them whether you are one of their clients or not. To them, you are a guppy.
I knew it would happen.
Guppies are fed juicy ipo’s.
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
The MM do buy and sell all day, but not like the HFTers. MMs are required to keep an orderly market. So there’s an inherent always a ploy to attract the paper/order flow so they can do that. There’s not a nefarious angle all the time to the job they do.
Madoff self-cleared. Otherwise, a clearing firm would have had legal liability for putting out statements with fraudulent positions.
Both statements are false and don't even make sense. Only a few firms are using HFT to generate market-beating returns (Renaissance Technologies being the standout).
Some of you people really need to read BARRON'S or The Wall Street Journal on a regular basis.
It has nothing to do with small traders and investors. It's the Big Boys fighting among themselves for scraps. Lower prices, greater liquidity benefits small investors.
Look up "SOES Bandits."
Values out in the long-run. Price manipulation is hard to maintain. Hundreds of large institutions are all acting independently.
You need to read up on markets before you make statements that make you look foolish, honestly.
Most IPOs have STUNK since end-2021.
Try again.....
Back to the OP.....interest rates and the gold price have no direct correlation over longer periods of time. What correlation there is relates to the CHANGE in interest rates from a given level.
1970's: Rates skyrocket over the decade.....hit double-digits in 1980...but gold goes up 20-fold.
1980's & 1990's: Rates decline....gold heads down as inflation ebs.
2000's: Rates rise....gold triples.
2019-20: Rates go down, gold soars.
2023: Rates rise, gold rises nicely.
The outright bs and misdirection by the financial system operatives in this thread are perfect examples of the narrative we are all being force-fed about how the “financial system” works.
Maybe you should do some reading of you own at Mises.org
(Then again, maybe we’re all better off if you don’t.)
I knew it would happen.
If you are talking about me, I'm no operative, I just know what I am talking about unlike some of the people here who regurgitate nonsense from idiotic websites.
Since there is no market for most of the nonsense being posted in this thread or section, the market will decide who is right and who is wrong.
Maybe someone should start an investment fund or hedge fund based on the stuff at Mises.org and put their money where their mouth is ?
Talk is cheap, let's see what happens when Mises.org or other websites have to tell us how their verbiage works in the Real World.
BTW, I actually have read and studied about Ludwig Von Mises and the Austrian School. Nothing wrong with that, but websites in their name are not all on the up-and-up.
Your are conflating Clearing House w brokerage firm.
Madoff had its own books as all companies do but like other brokerage firms as well, never cleared trades,
Brokerages don’t clear trades.
No need to start a hedge fund based on Mises “stuff”. 100% of my investment assets are in precious metals - zero debt and zero stocks since 2007.
I don’t worry about a bond market meltdown, a real estate market meltdown or a stock market crash.
15%/70%/15% has worked very well.
Average in, average out - keep detailed tax records on a spreadsheet - works great!
Absolutely no regrets here.
I knew it would happen.
https://www.sec.gov/files/oig-509-exec-summary.pdf
Yes, brokerages do clear trades if they have their own clearing operations. For instance, Bank of NY has Pershing.
Whether they do it themselves or outsource it to Pershing, DTC, State Street, etc....all the big Wall Street firms are on the hook if they clear for you. That's my point. If someone had checked and said "Hey, Madoff manages $20 Billion....where are the positions ?" it would have unraveled.
The auditors/CPA firm lied about the "custody of securities" in this SEC action:
https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-60.htm
My first institutional firm used our clearing through Morgan Stanley as a way to assuage clients in other states who never heard of our tiny firm (hell, people in NY State never heard of us !!). MS guaranteed all positions up to $5 MM in cash and $25 MM in total. For a nomial sum, you could increase those amounts by 10X.
I don't self-clear for the F&F accounts I manage. I use Fidelity. My clients get statements direct from Fidelity. If I sent them the Excel Spreadsheets I use to manage the accounts, I could make up anything.
That's what Madoff did.
That's a highly speculative portfolio. You're basically speculating on PMs.
What about the PM crashes we have had ?
Is that your asset allocation with stocks-bonds-cash ? You said above no stocks or bonds, so what are you referring to here ?
In the end, that is all that matters but it's obvious that if you are 100% in PMs you do not have the returns of balanced stock-bond portfolios over time.