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General Market Commentary
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Precious Metals
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General Market Commentary
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General Precious Metals
On the Clock by Trey Reik
We view the 1.63% decline in spot gold last week (from $1,313.70 to $1,292.30) as a bit of quarter-end window dressing by motivated market participants.
On the bright side, the April contract and quarter-end marks are now squarely in the rear-view mirror. If our analysis is correct, spot gold should now be free to respond more in sync with improving fundamentals.
Traders Focused on $1,300
Trading in precious-metal markets last week seemed heavily influenced by calendar-related items.
- First, the week marked the end of the roll period to a new front-month COMEX futures contract, in this case from April 2019 (GCJ9) to June 2019 (GCM9) futures.
- Second, 3/26/19 was a monthly expiration date for COMEX options.
- Third, 3/29/19 constituted the quarter-end mark for trillions-of-dollars-worth of over-the-counter options, contracts and derivatives for market participants ranging from hedge funds to the Bank for International Settlements.
During such a heavy week for option and derivative activity, it is not unusual for the price of any commodity to gravitate towards the price level of its maximum contract exposure. In viewing the five-day price graph of spot gold, in Figure 1, it seems clear that high-volume traders in paper gold markets were focused on the $1,300 price level during the waning days of March.
Figure 1. Gold Spot Price (3/25/2019 - 3/29/2019)
Source: Bloomberg.
A hallmark of free capital markets is that traders have latitude to execute their orders in any fashion permissible by rules of the relevant exchange. There is certainly no requirement for market participants to execute purchase or sale orders in a manner which minimizes costs or maximizes proceeds. However, in a sophisticated market such as trading highly-levered, precious-metal futures contracts, large orders are generally executed with sensitivity to limit prices and outstanding stop orders on dealer books. Therefore, whenever a large sell order is executed in a manner appearing to fly in the face of common sense in maximizing proceeds, legitimate questions can be posed as to the true intent of the seller—was the execution method designed to maximize proceeds, or to pressure market equilibrium? Because true intent can never be surmised, traders have coined the phrase “flash crash” to describe sharp price declines caused by inordinately high volume bursts.