Gold was trading near a one-week high today and is turning higher for the week, due to short-covering gains and the market questioning the Iran deal.
Comex had to suspend gold futures trading yesterday again – again for 20 seconds due to a massive sell order that led to just a $10 price fall.
Comex trading was halted for December gold futures at 6:02:24 a.m. GMT yesterday, Damon Leavell, a CME Group Inc. spokesman in New York, said in an e-mail. This led to gold falling to a 4 and a ½ month low near $1,225 an ounce before recovering from the massive sell order. Questions regarding gold manipulation continue to be asked including by Bloomberg (see link) overnight.
While the focus of the Bloomberg story is regarding possible rigging on the London AM Fix, regulators in the U.S. including the CFTC may need to reopen their investigation into manipulation of the gold market after the highly irregular trading on the COMEX last Wednesday and again early on Monday morning.
Without the massive sell order that shut down the COMEX for 20 seconds, gold prices would have been higher yesterday. That one trade pushed gold prices lower as European markets opened up and created very significant short term negative sentiment towards gold. It led to dozens of headlines that flew around the world which said that gold prices had fallen due to the Iran deal.
