Mr. Slammy and precious metals

Key Markets report for Monday, 10 March 2025

If you pay close enough attention to the markets, and in particular to precious metals, it's hard to escape the suspicion that the prices are somehow manipulated. Gold and silver have risen substantially since 2022/23, but their day-to-day fluctuations seem odd in the sense that often - perhaps too often for it to be random or accidental - when the price of gold and silver make significant gains, they'll get slammed down hard, usually on Fridays before close.

It's as though someone issued a lot of sell orders all at once, overwhelming the buyers and forcing all the weak hands to liquidate, triggering a flash-crash. That someone has been so consistent, they even earned themselves a nick-name in the markets: Mr. Slammy. It would appear that Mr. Slammy prefers to work during US regular trading sessions (between market open and close) and the chart below illustrates Mr. Slammy's track record: it isolates the overnight change in Silver price. In other words, it plots the price of silver sans the price changes between US market opening and closing hours:

This will be a tough one for the coincidence theorists…

Of course, conspiracy theorists will read all kinds of nefarious stuff into this. Coincidence theorists, by contrast, know for sure that the integrity of Western capital markets is rock solid and men don't conspire with other men (or women) in dark smoke-filled rooms and that the controllers of the current monetary systems would never, but never stoop so low as to dishonestly manipulate free, fair and democratical markets to defend their currency's value. At the same time, many market participants suspect that Mr. Slammy is real. Nowhere are these suspicions more rife than in the precious metals markets. Here are a few headlines about that:

• Gold Manipulators Busted After Zero Hedge Report On Flagrant Gold Spoofing

• Gold Manipulation, Spoofing Futures And Banging Fixes: Same Banks, Same Trading Desks

• Feds Crack Down On Traders "Spoofing" To Manipulate Prices Amid Record Number Of Cases

• Deutsche Bank Gold Manipulator: "Spoofing Was So Commonplace I Figured It Was OK"

• Former Deutsche Bank Traders Convicted Of Fraud For Spoofing Precious Metals Between 2008 And 2013

• JPM Pays Record $1 Billion Fine; Admits Spoofing Of Gold And Treasuries

Ultimately, the markets will prevail

Regardless of market manipulation, I believe that ultimately the market forces prevail and when large-scale price events can no longer be held back, Mr. Slammy will be flogging the waves to stem the tide, and to the same effect as King Canute did. The price of Gold did just set new all-time highs and we are certain to see more ATHs in the future. Markets move in trends and trends are far and away the most powerful drivers of investment performance. That's the twin hypothesis of I-System Trend Following, elaborated in more detail in the two articles linked below and the underlying philosophy behind this newsletter:

• Large-scale price events (LSPEs) are far and away the most powerful drivers of investment performance,

• Systematic trend following is the most reliable way to capture value from trends.

To learn more about TrendCompass reports please check our main TrendCompass web page. We encourage you to also have a read through our TrendCompass User Manual page.

Trading signals for Key Markets, 10 March 2025

With Friday’s closing prices we’ve had no new trading signals; your exposure should remain unchanged today, as follows:

Full Key Markets portfolio report is available at the following link:

TrendCompass Key Markets portfolio report for 10 March 2025

Best regards,

Alex Krainer