What do you get when you add the volatile sauce of a 'flight to safety' to the hot pan of a record net short in the large and small speculators?
A short squeeze, also known as
speculator flambé.
They probably caught a lot of the other peoples' money crowd as well, momentum players and the managed mayhem merchants.
But don't blame the poor beleagured goldbugs for this one. They are just glad for a break from the pounding they have been taking.
It requires some 'juice' to get the minions in the media and the pros on the exchanges to all dance to the same tune, and lure the specs in for 'Pee Wee's Big Adventure' with their Big Bad Short, not only on the metals, but the miners, the ETFs, yada yada.
Finger lickin' good.
A lot of cool money, and a lot of powerful connections. The grifters giveth to themselves, and the grifters taketh away, from everyone else.
Official reports will no doubt cite an excess of animal spirits in the bearish outlook that took them to an excess, and the markets, in their glorious efficiency, were merely reverting to the mean.
That might be plausible except that it took a lot of energy to drive the futures prices as low as they had gone, starting with that $50 overnight mugging in the quiet early hours of the gold markes few weeks ago. No one sees
Mackie Messer, and no one knows.
Especially with China dragging gold in by the tonne. About 302 of them in July according to the second chart below. Nothing to see there, move along.
No one wants a pet rock, until you have to provide the one you sold but didn't have.
Let's see how far it goes. Is it just a flash in the pan, or the first act in something different.
Must be nearly time to tighten up those margin requirements.