It's called rule 589...With little fanfare or notice, the CME Group has notified the CFTC that they plan to institute trading collars for Comex precious metals trading. At present, these collars are planned to go into effect on Monday, December 22.
Trading collars or "limits" are certainly not out of the ordinary. In the commodity markets, they have long been in place to limit the daily fluctuations of the grains. In S&P futures, collars have existed for years, brought about in large part by The Crash of 1987.
However, introducing these bands for the precious metals is completely new, as far as I can tell. And you'll note that these collars are only being implemented now, with prices at their bottoms. Wouldn't it have been nice to have trading collars in place back on May 1, 2011 or April 15, 2013?
I guess, ultimately, that leads us to the main question:
WHY NOW?
According to the documents embedded below, gold trading will now halt for five minutes after an intraday move of $100 from the previous close. The same for silver after a move of $3. At the current price levels, we're talking fluctuations of 8% and 17%, respectively. Those are tremendous price changes and they certainly would seem to be out-of-reach on an intraday basis anyway. So why the sudden rush by the CME to institute the collars? What do they know that we don't know? What are they afraid of?
Perhaps it's just as simple as this...We've all been waiting for the day when The Banks would be forced to exit the commodity business. By sheer size, The Banks dominate precious metal trading as they cap prices and act as de facto "market makers" in the sector. Without their influence, paper metal would be allowed to freely trade and float based purely upon the whims of the market. Is this day approaching more quickly than we thought? Just two weeks ago, executives from Goldman, MorganStanley and JPMorgan were hauled in front of a U.S. Senate committee and grilled about their "control of physical commodities and related businesses".
