Replies to post #129915 on DD Support Board and Research Team

[janice shell]

I suppose I should have said "things that have importance to large numbers of people". That wouldn't include personal possessions. People always think their stuff is valuable simply because it's theirs. I've expertised paintings whose owners believed, or wanted to believe, they had a lost masterpiece. Every once in awhile, that happens, but it's rare. Nothing I ever had to break the bad news about was worth much of anything. Same goes for real estate; I gather from what I see on HGTV that many people want to believe their homes are worth more than they really are, even though there's plenty of information about the market available.

But that wasn't what I meant. When something is important to a lot of people in a certain place, there's a market for it. And that will sustain, and perhaps drive up, the price. That's what markets are about. The Dutch love flowers. They do a great deal of international business in cut flowers, delivering them all over the world daily. But ordinary people love them too; there are weekly flower markets everywhere, and everyone seems to buy a big bunch or two.

So perhaps they were particularly vulnerable to the tulip craze because of that.

[stockmasterflash]

I know we are getting outside of the scope of fraud here

which is a pet peeve of mine, but this certainly falls under the DD heading. We can move it to the weekend if need be. But I know there are some here that do have this kind of knowledge.

For those that have experience with the construction of futures trading contracts from the ground up, trade contract #1, would an inventory of the underlying commodity be bought up for settlement? Or in the case of a cash settled product, as a hedge?

I'm thinking index products, the underlying securities tend to be bought (or are said to be bought) even though they are cash settled. Obviously Oil and gas get stored and delivered to Cushing and Henry Hub.

could any of recent Bitcoin buying be because of such inventory trades (Plus 10X that number all trying to trade ahead of those buys?)

since the announcement, the line has been smooth and up. No other crypto has done much of anything other than slightly bleed.

And for those that point to the underlying not really existiing, I liken it to an ETN. An index ETN isn't really anything other than a credit product that pays off in a bet on an index. An ETF being an ownership in the underlying product. The ETN simply a promise of the sponsor to pay.