By Bill Holter
As an addendum to yesterday's subscriber article, the topic of "time and sales" needs to be discussed. "Time and sales" is a very simple report that can be requested by literally anyone in any market. For example, when I was a young broker I had a large client who traded a minimum 10,000 shares at a clip. From time to time he would request a time and sales report to make sure his order was a good fill. Over a year's time and asking for close to a dozen orders to be checked, he did have one trade where he was ripped off for an 1/8th ($1,250) of a point (we still traded in 1/16ths and 1/8ths so you can guess how long ago this was). The order was rectified and the client was reimbursed.
The reason I bring this up is because the CFTC, NYSE, NASDAQ, SEC or any other agencies have this tool of "time and sales" available to them as all exchanges are required to keep these reports. The CFTC can pull a time and sales report to investigate ANY time period they choose going back to the 1970's ...which of course includes many of the obvious and blatant precious metal waterfall events since 1996. The report will tell them EXACTLY how many contracts were bought or sold and which firm(s) performed the trade. Then, they can query the firm to find out who the buyer (or gross seller) was. They have the ability to track ANY trade back to the source, end of story! But, they have not ever done this no matter how loudly the public cried out. Why not? This is fairly obvious, can you imagine if we truly knew "who"? I guess you could say because the public could NEVER handle the truth in their opinion?
So what is the point here? I wrote yesterday commenting on the settlement between the CFTC and David Liew and said I hoped they would "pull on that thread". The more I thought about it, the CFTC never needed David Liew (though he would be helpful). All they need (needed) to do is pull a time and sales report before, during and after any of the plentiful waterfall events in precious metals. This would lead them to the clearing firm and thus the ultimate client. I might add, there was gross negligence after 911 for the airline put trades never to have been tracked back to the source. I would also add, if anyone in law enforcement is reading this, many people were MURDERED that day and there is no statute of limitations for murder. Please demand a time and sales for who bought all of those puts, follow the money (even though the winnings were never collected). The firms were required to "know their customer", the identities can still be discovered if someone within law enforcement truly wanted to know. Perhaps, just as above ...the public cannot handle the real truth?
The question still remains, is the CFTC now "changed" with a new administration and are they serious about following the rule of law? If this is the case, all they need to do is follow the paper trail to discover who sold time and time again into the paper gold and silver markets to "e"ffect (no not a typo) and suppress price? Time and sales is in no way rocket science, any B grade broker has heard the term and knows what it is ...does the CFTC? I am certain they do!
Standing watch,
Bill Holter
Holter-Sinclair collaboration
Bill Holter writes and is partnered with Jim Sinclair at the newly formed Holter/Sinclair collaboration.
Prior, he wrote for Miles Franklin from 2012-15. Bill worked as a retail stockbroker for 23 years, including 12 as a branch manager at A.G. Edwards. He left Wall Street in late 2006 to avoid potential liabilities related to management of paper assets. In retirement he and his family moved to Costa Rica where he lived until 2011 when he moved back to the United States. Bill was a well-known contributor to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) commentaries from 2007-present.