Proposing an Overnight Gold Fund

There is much debate within the precious metals industry regarding the alleged suppression, or at least manipulation to an extent, by either central banks or the proprietary trading divisions of large banks, or a combination of the two.

In April the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission CFTC fined Hedge Fund Moore Capital for manipulation of the New York platinum and palladium futures market, as the firm was found to be “banging the close”, which involves entering orders in a manner designed to inflate the closing price, which other various derivatives contracts could be based on. So that is irrefutable evidence that the precious metals futures market is, at least to some extent, being manipulated. However a large concentration of this debate is based not on platinum and palladium, but on gold and silver, and particularly gold.

Numerous hypothesises have been put forward as to the motive behind alleged suppression of the gold, ranging from a central bank conspiracy to keep gold prices low, to large trading banks simply exploiting their market dominance for easy profits, or even a combination of the two with the central banks and large bullion trading operations working together in some kind for cartel to keep gold prices low. (more)