by Craig Hemke
Sprott Money
Back in November, we noticed a new trick being employed to manage and manipulate the COMEX gold price into month-end expirations. Here’s an update and explanation of why and how this is occurring.
Again, we’ve already written about this twice. You may have missed those links, however, so here they are again in case you need a refresher:
[…] The topic at hand is a surge each month in Trade at Settlement volume. This surge typically begins on or around the seventh day of the month where a front/delivery month is due to expire, and it then continues for five days. Typical average volume of TAS trades is about 3,000 per day. During these surges, the daily volume grows by 10X and regularly exceeds 30,000 contracts.