On Sat, 17 Aug 2013 17:27:13 -0500, Ignoramus31265
wrote:

On 2013-08-17, wrote:
On Saturday, August 17, 2013 11:43:33 AM UTC-4, Ed Huntress wrote:

. But the banks are withholding

metals from the market while trading in those metals on their own

accounts. That ought to be worth a prison term.


Ed Huntress

So what laws are the banks violating? As far as I know commodity
trading is legal. Owning aluminum had better be legal or I am in
trouble by having some raw stock in my basement.

Since Aluminum prices have been going down, it looks like the banks
are losing money. I am looking forward to copper prices to follow
the Aluminum prices and go down.

They are ripping off their customers, who bought metal on exchanges
and seek to get physical delivery, by holding on to the metal longer
than necessary and charging storage fees. It is a ripoff. But its
effect on aluminum prices is not big.

It doesn't have to be. Currency traders make or lose tens or hundreds
of millions on the price-shift of 0.1% in a currency's value. Trading
commodities can be similar, if you're leveraged 100:1 or more...which
they are, because they don't have to own the commodity at all.


It affects futures pricing in a minor way, because a trader who is
contemplating buying a futures contract, anticipates paying extra
ripoff storage fees.

Golden Sacks et al. are trading contracts on their own account -- and
they're manipulating prices by controlling the distribution of 25% of
the aluminum in the U.S.


Other than that, there should not be much effect on the price of
aluminum.

i