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A couple of readers asked me to comment on the news Regulator Fines Barclays Over the Pricing of Gold. A British financial regulator has fined Barclays $43.9 million after accusing a former trader at the bank of improperly influencing gold prices at the expense of a customer. The F.C.A. also fined the former Barclays trader, Daniel James Plunkett, £95,600 and barred him from participating in any regulated financial activity. The authority said Mr. Plunkett, who settled with it, had profited at the expense of a customer, who was later fully compensated by Barclays. Mr. Plunkett’s improper conduct occurred on June...

With countless settlements documenting the rigging of every single asset class, it was only a matter of time before the regulators - some 10 years behind the curve as usual - finally cracked down on gold manipulation as well, even though as we have shown in the past, central banks in general and the Fed in particular are among the biggest gold manipulators. That said, we are confident by now nobody will be surprised that there was manipulation going on in the gold casino. In fact, ever since Germany's Bafin launched a probe into Deutsche Bank for gold and silver...

Tyler Durden 11/25/2015 When it comes to commodity metals, the dead cat no longer bounces. We showed this last night in "No End In Sight For Commodity Carnage As Chinese Fear Fed Hike Blowback", a post which can be summarized with the following chart showing that at least for nickel, copper, zinc, iron ore and aluminum it will be a very unhappy holiday season: The one-word reason for this condition: China, which as documented extensively in the past, has clammed down on its unprecedented credit creation now that its debt/GDP is well over 300% and as a result conventional industries...

Tyler Durden 11/16/2015 Shanghai Copper is down 4.6%, hitting fresh cycle lows not seen since March 2009. No clear catalyst is evident for now aside from stronger USDollar, Codelco's cuts, and more chatter of CCFD unwinds. If COMEX Copper holds these losses, it will be down for 10 straight days - the longest on record from what we could tell. Copper is crashing in China... (snip)

The Financial Times is very sensitive about cut-and-paste. So suffice to say that a mob grabbed the head of a Chinese metals exchange, roughed him up, then turned him over to police.

And it could be the key to understanding one of the biggest mysteries in physics today - high-temperature superconductors.An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a new state of matter in a material that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one, saying that it could lead to the development of more effective high-temperature superconductors. Why is this so exciting? Well, if these properties are confirmed, this new state of matter will allow scientists to better understand why some materials have the potential to achieve superconductivity at a relativity high critical temperature...

A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury. In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. "It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50...

February 22, 2015 By: Austin Galt Copper got a bit of press attention recently with headlines of a plunge in price. This was in early January and I hadn't looked at the copper chart for a few days and I was gobsmacked when I did. A plunge they say?! What a load of baloney!! If that was a plunge then they are in for a big shock later this year if my analysis is correct. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the small picture and then come back to the big picture which will reveal the...

Professor Chrisopher Exley of Keele University claims that aluminium present in everyday items like cosmetics and food may be building up in the brain and causing Alzheimer's disease Aluminium poisoning may be fuelling Alzheimer’s disease, a leading professor has claimed.Professor Chrisopher Exley, of Keele University, said that exposure to the metal causes deposits in the human brain which can exacerbate other problems...Aluminium, he argues, is now added to or used in almost everything we eat, drink, inject or absorb. The metal is abundant in the Earth’s crust and is naturally absorbed from the soil by plants and foodstuffs. But aluminium...

   October 5, 2014Joe Weisenthal There goes gold. As markets whirr back to life to start the week, gold is falling again. (snip)

Shares of rare earth mining company Molycorp are down more than 70% in 2014. But the decline of Molycorp began quickly and brutally in 2011. Molycorp went public in July 2010 at $14 per share, right as the price of rare earth minerals started to take off. The price of Molycorp shares quintupled within a year, and peaked at $74 in 2011. But over the last three years, the stock has been on a steady march towards $0. The 2010 surge in rare earth prices prompted ZeroHedge to write: "Ever heard of the oxides of Lanthanum, Cerium, Neodymium, Praseodymium and/or...

Tungsten is an extremely hard, robust rare metal that has the highest melting point of all the elements, at 3422 °C (6192 °F). It also has a density that is 19.3 times that of water and about 1.7 times that of lead, which makes it comparable to uranium and gold. And now, a Philips-owned company is 3D printing it. Netherlands-based Smit Röntgen, a medical imaging parts manufacturer, has used Direct Metal Laser Sintering to 3D print tungsten parts. The company began researching the potential of 3D printing tungsten as a business opportunity over a decade ago and announced on Monday...

"Banks are worried about their exposure," warns one warehousing source, "there is a scramble for people to head down there at the minute and make sure that their metal that they think is covered by a warehouse receipt actually exists." The rehypothecated catastrophe that we discussed in great detail here (copper financing), here (all commodities), and here (global contagion) appears to be gathering speed as the China's northeastern port of Qingdao has halted shipments of aluminum and copper due to an investigation by authorities after they found "there is a discrepancy in metal that should be there and metal that...

China's northeastern port of Qingdao has halted shipments of aluminium and copper due to an investigation by authorities, causing concern among bankers and trade houses financing the metals, trading and warehousing sources said on Monday. Port authorities could not immediately be reached for comment. China has a public holiday on Monday. "We were told we can't ship any material out while they do this investigation," a source at a trading house said. The port of Qingdao is China's third-largest foreign trade port and the world's seventh-largest port, trading with 700 ports in more than 180 countries, according to its website...

Scientists in the Philippines have discovered a plant that can absorb large amounts of metal without itself being poisoned, a species called the Rinorea niccolifera, that can be used to clean up polluted soils and harvest commercially viable metals. The plant is one of only 450 species, known as hyperaccumulator plants, of 300,000 known vascular plants that can absorb significant amounts of metal though their roots. The lead researcher and author of a new study on the plant, Professor Edwino Fernando, from the University of the Philippines, said the leaves of the Rinorea niccolifera can absorb up to 18,000 parts...

I checked the stock market today and noticed it's down. But I also noticed that precious metals appear to be tanking. Gold is at $1245/oz and Silver at $19.85/oz. What's going on here? Is J.P. Morgan or some other major player manipulating the precious metals market?

 This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (August-19-23 edition)----  Trying to focus on the markets for today and each day and the economic news This is where you can exchange some investment opinions and advice  If you see another FR economic thread you like and want to link to it here, please do Post your favorite economic site links. Your favorite economic blogs and precious metals blogs and sitesPing list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me I might ping you to other interesting economic threads a few times a...

The Yomiuri Shimbun Japan has obtained exclusive mineral exploration rights for rare metals and other resources on the seabed about 600 kilometers southeast of Tokyo’s Minami-Torishima island. It is the first time in 26 years that Japan has obtained mineral exploration rights on the high seas. In an announcement Saturday, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry said it would begin full-fledged exploration next fiscal year at the earliest. To obtain exclusive exporation rights, a nation must first gain the approval of the United Nations’ International Seabed Authority. The U.N. authority gave its approval Friday, and the government is expected to...

Silver Has Now Had An Insane Day, And Is Actually Higher After Plunging 9% Matthew Boesler May 20, 2013 Silver got slammed last night when futures markets re-opened to begin the week. At its lowest level, the precious metal had fallen nearly 9% to $20.25 an ounce. Remarkably, it's already staged a big comeback, and it just turned positive on the day. In the past few minutes, it's screamed higher, and is now trading around $23.00, up 2.7%. Miller Tabak's Jonathan Krinsky offers some commentary on why the details of the sell-off may actually be positive for those bullish on...

Gold And Silver True Story Is All About Time - Be Prepared Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013 May 19, 2013 - 06:10 PM GMT By: Michael Noonan We are going to start off with one of the most eye-popping pictures of just one central bank, the privately owned corporate Federal Reserve, and its purported gold holding. Occasionally, we drop a bit of history that most people either ignore or simply do not believe, but this one cannot be conveniently shunted aside. One of the provisions in the FEDERAL Constitution, the 14th Amendment, [the original, organic Constitution had only 10...