Turmoil at Metals Exchange Trading Nickel Used in Lithium-Ion Batteries and EVs (cnn.com) 104
Early last month on the London Metals Exchange, a Chinese metals producer named Tsingshan Holding Group "wagered a massive bet that the price of nickel would fall," reports CNN Business. At the peak Tsingshan's position "was equivalent to about an eighth of all of the outstanding contracts in the market."
But between Friday, March 4 and Tuesday March 8, the metal soared in value from about $29,000 to $100,000 per ton. "If prices had stood at $100,000 the company would have owed the London Metals Exchange $15 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal." The spike generated margin calls higher than the London Metals Exchange [the LME] had ever seen — and if paid, they would force multiple defaults that would ripple through the exchange and destabilize the global market. Exchange executives scrambled to respond, ultimately throwing a lifeline to the brokers representing Tsingshan and other producers. In an unprecedented move, they halted trading and retroactively canceled all 9,000 trades that occurred on Tuesday, worth about $4 billion in total. The market would remain dark for a week, unleashing a tidal wave of chaos and a mob of angry investors onto the exchange. In its wake, threats of lawsuits abound and trust has eroded. [The day it re-opened, CNN also reported the exchange "had to suspend the electronic trading of nickel shortly after it resumed due to a technical problem."]
Now, the 145 year-old British giant is teetering on a nickel. Over the past century-and-a-half the LME, known for its ring of red couches and barking brokers, has successfully trudged its way through world wars, meltdowns and defaults. But nickel, the metal used in stainless steel and the lithium-ion battery cells in most electric vehicles, might be what finally brings the world's largest market for base metals contracts to its knees."The world's pricing mechanism for nickel is failing," said Daniel Ghali, the director of commodities strategy at TD Securities. "The question is, will it continue to fail?" Others weren't as diplomatic. "The LME is now very likely going to die a slow self-inflicted death through the loss of confidence in it and its products," tweeted Mark Thompson, executive vice-chairman at Tungsten West, a mining development company....
Until 2012, the LME was owned by its members, the same people who traded on the exchange — but then it was sold to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) for $2.2 billion....
The LME's lack of transparency allows two or three big names to throw around vast sums of money and "hijack" a relatively illiquid market, said Adrian Gardner, principal analyst of nickel markets at Wood Mackenzie.... Sitting on the other side of the short were hedge funds, who had bet that nickel supply would decrease because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Russia provides about 20% of all top-grade nickel). When the LME decided to retroactively cancel those $4 billion in gains on March 8, it was hedge funds who lost giant sums of money. Global investment management firm AQR, which has $124 billion in assets under management, was among those that lost money when trades were canceled. "The winners were commodity producers and their banks, and the losers are the various clients that AQR and other large asset managers represent: firefighters, municipal workers, and university endowments," said Jordan Brooks, principal at AQR Capital Management. AQR is considering legal action against the exchange. Investors, said Brooks, "acted in good faith and provided liquidity, but the LME just decided to shift their trading gains to commodities producers and their banks...."
Volume in trading has yet to recover, raising questions about the LME's ability to accurately benchmark the price of the metal. Fewer than 210 contracts were traded in the first hour after the market opened on Tuesday. That's down about 60% from the 90-day average before the trading halt. Other metals on the LME, like copper and aluminum, have also seen a decrease in trade volume....
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange doesn't currently trade nickel, but perhaps it soon will. "[The LME] did something that was egregious and a betrayal of trust," said Brooks. "I'd be shocked if the strategic plans of other exchanges haven't changed in the past three weeks."
But between Friday, March 4 and Tuesday March 8, the metal soared in value from about $29,000 to $100,000 per ton. "If prices had stood at $100,000 the company would have owed the London Metals Exchange $15 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal." The spike generated margin calls higher than the London Metals Exchange [the LME] had ever seen — and if paid, they would force multiple defaults that would ripple through the exchange and destabilize the global market. Exchange executives scrambled to respond, ultimately throwing a lifeline to the brokers representing Tsingshan and other producers. In an unprecedented move, they halted trading and retroactively canceled all 9,000 trades that occurred on Tuesday, worth about $4 billion in total. The market would remain dark for a week, unleashing a tidal wave of chaos and a mob of angry investors onto the exchange. In its wake, threats of lawsuits abound and trust has eroded. [The day it re-opened, CNN also reported the exchange "had to suspend the electronic trading of nickel shortly after it resumed due to a technical problem."]
Now, the 145 year-old British giant is teetering on a nickel. Over the past century-and-a-half the LME, known for its ring of red couches and barking brokers, has successfully trudged its way through world wars, meltdowns and defaults. But nickel, the metal used in stainless steel and the lithium-ion battery cells in most electric vehicles, might be what finally brings the world's largest market for base metals contracts to its knees."The world's pricing mechanism for nickel is failing," said Daniel Ghali, the director of commodities strategy at TD Securities. "The question is, will it continue to fail?" Others weren't as diplomatic. "The LME is now very likely going to die a slow self-inflicted death through the loss of confidence in it and its products," tweeted Mark Thompson, executive vice-chairman at Tungsten West, a mining development company....
Until 2012, the LME was owned by its members, the same people who traded on the exchange — but then it was sold to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) for $2.2 billion....
The LME's lack of transparency allows two or three big names to throw around vast sums of money and "hijack" a relatively illiquid market, said Adrian Gardner, principal analyst of nickel markets at Wood Mackenzie.... Sitting on the other side of the short were hedge funds, who had bet that nickel supply would decrease because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Russia provides about 20% of all top-grade nickel). When the LME decided to retroactively cancel those $4 billion in gains on March 8, it was hedge funds who lost giant sums of money. Global investment management firm AQR, which has $124 billion in assets under management, was among those that lost money when trades were canceled. "The winners were commodity producers and their banks, and the losers are the various clients that AQR and other large asset managers represent: firefighters, municipal workers, and university endowments," said Jordan Brooks, principal at AQR Capital Management. AQR is considering legal action against the exchange. Investors, said Brooks, "acted in good faith and provided liquidity, but the LME just decided to shift their trading gains to commodities producers and their banks...."
Volume in trading has yet to recover, raising questions about the LME's ability to accurately benchmark the price of the metal. Fewer than 210 contracts were traded in the first hour after the market opened on Tuesday. That's down about 60% from the 90-day average before the trading halt. Other metals on the LME, like copper and aluminum, have also seen a decrease in trade volume....
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange doesn't currently trade nickel, but perhaps it soon will. "[The LME] did something that was egregious and a betrayal of trust," said Brooks. "I'd be shocked if the strategic plans of other exchanges haven't changed in the past three weeks."
Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you will cancel trades that were done in full faith, you can't be trusted. Zero reason at all to use that exchange. Not for Nickel. Not for anything.
And doing it just to prop up some powerful people? That is go to jail behavior, not just go bankrupt.
I can't believe I have not heard of this till now.
Re:Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They're not a bunch of drunks. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're correct. It's not alcohol generally. It's coke.
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From what I can tell, that's how the UK Parliament works (except some of their couches are green).
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Cancelling trades within a settlement period is not uncommon. What is apparently odd here is the mix of physical trading and financial/hedge fund trading creating a situation where the prices did not reflect the physical commodity's fundamentals.
Essentially what happened was the losses were capped for Tshingshan. I'm not sure where the outrage really is coming from here; I don't think there was really a better outcome. The LME clearly does not have proper controls in place though for this type of thing t
Prices did not reflect fundamentals (Score:2)
Like TSLA shares?
Re:Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:5, Insightful)
the prices did not reflect the physical commodity's fundamentals.
Sez who? Who gets to decide what is a "fundamental"?
Tsingshan bet that Putin was bluffing. He wasn't.
So they lost. There should be no "do over".
If they weren't willing to cover their bets, they shouldn't have been gambling.
Re:Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tsingshan bet that Putin was bluffing. He wasn't.
So they lost. There should be no "do over".
It’s a rigged system, always has been. The rules are nebulous and arcane enough to do anything the market makers want “to keep the market flowing” for the right people. But if the wrong person loses big time, such that it’s their financial asses on the line, suddenly it’s “but they were going to break the market so we had to bend rules x,y, and z or it would crash!”. This despite stacking rules against the little players continuously since the market opened. Their entire profit model involves crashing the little players over and over and feeding on the blood.
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It’s a rigged system, always has been.
It's never been rigged this badly.
The owner of the trading system said, "Cancel those trades, because we lost a lot of money." And the trading system did.
Re: Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:2)
This. No one can trust an exchange that doesn't enforce its rules fairly. It shouldn't matter who is margin called, little guy or billionaire friend of the brokers. Pay up, you lost your bet.
Heads should roll for backing out those legitimate trades.
Re:Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:4, Interesting)
the prices did not reflect the physical commodity's fundamentals.
Sez who? Who gets to decide what is a "fundamental"?
Perhaps referring to the disconnect between Nickel's abundance and the price?
Reminds me of the GameStop insanity a bit.
But this is what you get when you have hedge funds and replace real life with speculation.
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the prices did not reflect the physical commodity's fundamentals.
Sez who? Who gets to decide what is a "fundamental"?
Perhaps referring to the disconnect between Nickel's abundance and the price?
Reminds me of the GameStop insanity a bit.
But this is what you get when you have hedge funds and replace real life with speculation.
The price for Nickel (and GameStop) were certainly not reasonable from an purely pragmatic and not-in-the-game logic perspective.
But the market very intentionally allows speculation - even at this level, risk, and cost - which, coupled with external factors, results in exactly these kinds of market swings.
To be fair, the brokerage firms were able to, and did do, a lot to help each other with gamestop since it's a much larger and more liquid market. But just because a commodity is priced above or below it's
Re:Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cancelling one or a few trades done by a single person is not uncommon. Cancelling all trades in a short period, an hour or so is not uncommon if some kind of mistake or criminal behavior occured.
But some cancelling all trades in a full day of trading? Because of a short situation where some liar says they do not reflect the fundamentals? That is unheard of.
They do NOT have the right to cap losses for anyone. That is outright criminal behavior. Trying to protect any single client is against all the laws and regulations.
These exchanges are designed to be fair to everyone. Giving one client extra protection goes against everything they stand for.
If Tshingshan has the right to make money when the prices go one way but can't lose money when they are wrong, then why would anyone ever accept their trades? It would become a guaranted loss.
No. This was totally and completely unethical behavior. The exchanges do not owe Tshingshan and if they give them any such protection, no one that does not get the exact same protection will trade with them.
Tsingshan must accept the losses, or no one will willing every trade with them again. And if the LME does not rule that way, no one will ever trade with the LME.
On the point of the LME not having proper protections, that is a separate issue. Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is not. But putting them in retroactively will make the matter worse. It is outright theft from the people that bet against Tsingshan. They obeyed the rules and won.
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Allowing this sort of thing to stand, just ensures that it will happen again and again, and each time the rest of the market loses.
Just like in 2007 when Bush used taxpayer money to protect Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, et al from the consequences of their own actions. Mind you, the people who lost their homes didn't get a single pfenig to cover their losses or protect them from losses, only the banks and trading firms.
All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.
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It is a different when the government bails out idiots. That is nothing like this situation. The government has obligations to the economy above and beyond obligations to fairness. Government routinely bail out corporations and people, it may be unethical, it may go to their friends and allies, but there is a legal justification for their activities.
The government is also not overseen and regulated by someone else. They can basically ignore all regulations (created by their own agencies) and only have
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The exchanges do not owe Tshingshan and if they give them any such protection,
Tshingshan is a partial owner of that exchange.
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Re:Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Essentially what happened was the losses were capped for Tshingshan. I'm not sure where the outrage really is coming from here; I don't think there was really a better outcome. The LME clearly does not have proper controls in place though for this type of thing to be done in an orderly fashion.
So what you're implying is that the market betting system isn't really a betting system. Rather, it's one where bad bets get a do-over. Isn't "moral hazard" supposed to be a thing in capitalism; or is that just for all of us "dumb money" folks?
If you really mean that, well we have to manage bad bets so the economy doesn't collapse, then how is capitalism even a thing when bad bets get a do-over arbitrarily decided by someone? That implies the market betting system is intentionally rigged. Intentionally rigged betting systems are illegal in most places in the west.
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What would you prefer? Another global financial crisis on top of the pandemic & war with Ukraine?
Yes. That's how free markets and capitalsim works. People or businesses make bad bets and they fail. Taxpayers, or in this case a trading exchange, should not be in the business of repeatedly and endlessly bailing out and protecting those who make wrong bets or can't forsee the consequences of their actions.
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The trouble is, a lot of people suffer the consequences of their actions so governments have to step in to try to repair the damage. The people who make the bad bets don't appear to suffer all that much.
Which is the problem. Those who make the bad bets should suffer. If others get caught up in the carnage, that's why they pay for insurance (assuming they're a company and have insurance for this purpose).
If all that happens is the government steps in and makes the bad bettor whole, then it's no longer capitalism and free markets. It's some weird form of fascism.
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There was no risk of contagion in this situation. It wouldn't have caused a global financial crisis.
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So what you're implying is that the market betting system isn't really a betting system. Rather, it's one where bad bets get a do-over. Isn't "moral hazard" supposed to be a thing in capitalism; or is that just for all of us "dumb money" folks?
Just a correction - not all bad bets will get a do-over. Only bad bets placed by certain rich / well connected / some other special criteria (maybe cos LME is owned by an HK org, and the bad bet was made by a Chinese company, so political concerns maybe?) will get a do over.
Everyone else can go screw yourself.
Re: Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:2)
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Canceling trades is not uncommon - true. Technical or administrative reasons lead to it, within defined rules.
Canceling trades because they present a financial liability (up to liquidation and/or bankruptcy) to a company is, as TFS mentioned, unprecedented. The claim seems to be it was done out of necessity for market stability but that's BS. Playing favorites is going to bury LSE, and seems to be pretty quickly pushing volume off their exchange.
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If you will cancel trades that were done in full faith, you can't be trusted. Zero reason at all to use that exchange. Not for Nickel. Not for anything.
And doing it just to prop up some powerful people? That is go to jail behavior, not just go bankrupt.
I can't believe I have not heard of this till now.
Capitalism at its finest. A betting system where failure isn't an option for the wealthiest economic agents or those seen as too big to fail (smart money); but failure is legally enforced for the rest or us (dumb money). The more I think about it, the more I come to understand it really just a legalized insider mob racket, but one where the mob boss is a CEO or elected official.
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Bruh, this isn't happening in the USA. Keep on topic.
Re: Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:2)
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For an example of how stupid short selling has caused unwinding of trades and general corruption in the US just look at the GameStop crap that’s gone on. Suddenly when a few hedge funds get their nuts slammed in the short squeeze rules are bent and broken and retail are the ones made to pay. After all, retail bought a stock and held it, that’s criminal behavior that needs to be investigated.
I knew it! We need to investigate the USA because a London commodities exchange had some whacked out dealings with a Chinese outfit over a pretend shortage and price rise.
Your ideas are intriguing, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter, and pray tell - do you have T-Shirts?
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This isn't capitalism, this is government intervening in the markets to pick winners and losers: AKA a planned economy. The exact opposite of everything that the USA claims/pretends to be.
Where you been? We've been waiting for an axe grinder to come along and blame this on the USA! Stay awake - on Slashdot if any non-US issue isn't blamed on the US within the first three posts, it doesn't count.
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> And doing it just to prop up some powerful people?
Rumor is exchange employees' lives were threatened. I don't know if it's true but hitmen run less than 15 billion. Maybe we would do the same?
Re:Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:4, Insightful)
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They all operate on "virtual" commodities. That worked fine while there was no restrictions on commodity flows. In the presence of restrictions on commodity flows (sanctions, export limits, etc) the only guaranteed means to obtain a commodity is to shop directly with the seller. All exchanges as well as any money generated out of thin air in the exchange economy are dead. As a side effect - any control we used to have via the exchanges is dead too.
It is part of the
Re: Cancelling trades? That will destroy them. (Score:1)
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Very good point. However, with China's increasing dominance over Hong Kong, generally, this loss of trust might be not only even more justified but also for the better.
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Would they cancel the trades, if the gambler won?
Let's call it what it is: the company gambled, and lost, big time. It is not a theoretical 15bn loss. It is an actual bet they have to pay out.
If they have not hedged while doing this bet, too bad for them. It is time to liquidate.
If the exchange does not hold their promise, then they too will start liquidating after the lawsuits ends.
We really shouldn't have a system (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:We really shouldn't have a system (Score:5, Insightful)
So . . . we shouldn't have a Stock market?
Not one that gets constant bailouts that are causing inflation and raising the "debt"
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The stock market needs to be heavily regulated (Score:2)
Yes we do need to balance investor risk so that investors can make a profit, but we also need to remember that many investors are buying in the products that were developed with taxpayer dollars and are really on
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Re: We really shouldn't have a system (Score:1)
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This isn't the stock market and all it does is jack up prices.
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You do understand that you can simply ban short trades, right?
The stock market doesn't have to be a casino, that's a choice.
Either your casino is honest, or it isn't. (Score:3)
I could see suspending trading (Score:3)
but cancelling trades? They should have "eaten" the 4 billion dollars.
This turned on a dime from a "deal is a deal" system to "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" system.
You know cryptocurrency is crashed multiple times (Score:2)
No LME trades were cancelled (Score:2)
They 'just' ignored the Asian trading which sent the virtual price up overnight.
Now this doesn't happen very often and I don't know what's normal.
When you have an open position on the close of the futures market, you have to actually deliver or be delivered the nickel. I don't think it got to that point so it only affects margin calls.
I don't understand how these margin calls would crash markets somehow.
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Only in China (Score:2)
This happened because the people behind the exchange knew the Chinese courts would have their back against western interests.
Commodity exchanges should not allow speculation (Score:2)
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Even without the exchange a producer can just enter into a direct naked delivery contract which he hopes to fulfil by buying on the open market, which is also what happened here. Big shot and his friends still needs to manipulate the market for months to hope to sucker other producers to sell through him and save him from his naked shorts, this was just the start.
You need to regulate all promises of future delivery, on or off exchange.
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These commodity exchanges should be regulated
More regulation means the market will move somewhere else that isn't regulated.
Just like American stock trading moved to Dark Pools [wikipedia.org] in the aftermath of SOX.
if they have one short contract, they also need to hold one long contract to net things out.
That makes no sense at all.
Re: Commodity exchanges should not allow speculati (Score:2)
Re:Commodity exchanges should not allow speculatio (Score:4, Insightful)
That makes it pointless except speculation (Score:2)
> require participants to remain neutral at all times. i.e if they have one short contract, they also need to hold one long contract to net things out.
That would make it pointless for most appropriate uses of the system. Holding both ends of the contact, long and short, you may as well have sold it to yourself - done a deal with yourself. You haven't actually done anything at all.
An appropriate, helpful use of options is for a company whose costs are affected by the cost of nickel. Somebody like SAIC f
It was an honest mistake (Score:1)
It was a late night, they'd had a lot to drink and they thought they were shorting Nickelback [wikipedia.org].
from CNN and no mention of Beijing in this? (Score:3)
I thought it odd there was no mention of Beijing in that article.
This from March 11 Financial Times:
https://www.ft.com/content/067... [ft.com]
Interesting how it turned out.
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Got a link for those of us without an FT subscription? Or at least a summary of how Beijing is involved?
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Got a link for those of us without an FT subscription? Or at least a summary of how Beijing is involved?
Sorry about that - I read it on my FT free article, and now I can't get back to it.
Here is another article on the topic. It's not as direct as the FT one, but you get the gist.
It appears that someone gave Tsingshan a credit lifeline large enough to cover the calls, and this was likely due to his political connections..
https://asia.nikkei.com/Busine... [nikkei.com]
"Xiang, who is thought to be a close to senior Chinese officials, was quoted by local media on Tuesday as saying that unnamed foreigners were to blame for the
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On the topic of fuller stories on this that do include talking about China:
- On the 8th of March, ft.com called it out: https://www.ft.com/content/026... [ft.com]
https://gata.org/node/21778 [gata.org] On Tuesday the London Metal Exchange suspended dealings in nickel after prices doubled to a record above $100,000 a tonne, bringing to a near-standstill global trading in the metal, used to make stainles
Tesla wins again (Score:2)
I have to wonder if they knew this was coming. Certainly they realized early what they needed and what they had to do.
Which is Lock In a Source Contract. [reuters.com]
Every other aspiring battery-electric auto maker is is just sitting around assuming their battery supplier will take care of it. Look for the phrase "supply chain challenges" in their upcoming financial reports.
Putin knows force majeure, you don't. (Score:4, Interesting)
It is absolutely correct for an exchange to cancel transactions when something like this happened. There is no reason for speculators to win and create market instability due to extraordinary events.
Remember, Putin is going to have more than $325 billion in windfall from commodity market speculation by traders and Putin will likely have more money than Elon Musk when his Ukraine adventure is over.
In case you are not aware, Putin did his 1997 Ph. D. thesis on the effect of commodity markets instability on the Russia economy and he knows exactly what he is doing.
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Which is why you shouldn't let him spend his money on the open market.
Let him trade with smugglers with all the suppliers in their supply chain being deadly afraid of getting Huawei'd ... then there is no profit.
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Which is why you shouldn't let him spend his money on the open market.
Let him trade with smugglers with all the suppliers in their supply chain being deadly afraid of getting Huawei'd ... then there is no profit.
Not only that, any and all assets that can be located should be seized and held in escrow for future war reparations.
If that offends capitalist sensibilities that is just too F'ing bad.
There's always an undo button if you're big enough (Score:2)
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It's not enough to be big. It's about whether or not you are a partial owner in the exchange.
They are not evil. (Score:1)
Someone please explain this to me (Score:2)
From TFA:
âoeTsingshan announced it had reached a standstill agreement with JPMorgan and that it would be allowed to maintain its short agreement. The company plans to produce 850,000 tons of nickel this year.âoe
Why would Tsingshan be âoeallowedâ to keep the massive short unless it benefited them?
The article initially makes it sound like Tsingshan blundered by making a stupid bet but this statement specifically makes it sound like Tsingshan was manipulating the market for its own benefit
Tshingshan lost a bet, why protect them? (Score:3)
Tshingshan made a bet that the price of nickel would go down but it went up. The bet was legitimate (no fraud, criminal activity or mistakes occurred here) so why should they get to walk away from their bet and not pay up?
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so why should they get to walk away from their bet and not pay up?
Because they are big. Your silly common person rules do not apply.
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To be more specific, when china owns the London Metal Exchange, they will cancel whatever contracts they want.
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You say China but the reality is their policy didn't coin the term "too big to fail".
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In this case, it's "too big to make a fair contract with."
Cancelling Trades (Score:2)
what? no magic hand? (Score:2)
I thought the markets are magic and solve every problem known to mankind.
And yet, whenever one of the too-big-to-fail players gambles a bit too hard, they get saved by circumventing the very market mechanisms that are preached to us as the saviours of mankind (and used as a cheap excuse whenever someone wants to reduce our salaries, make our work harder or remove social security benefits).
Strange world...
Re: what? no magic hand? (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s the kind of thing that happens when you sell key institutions to a hostile dictatorship.
Eff em (Score:2)
Link to LME COTRs (Score:1)
https://www.lme.com/en/Market-... [lme.com]
And people though Gamestop was bad (Score:1)
Imagine if Robinhood canceled everyones options as well.
This exchange is doomed.
What were they trying to do? (Score:2)
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Lol, here's Fox reporting the same goddamn thing you moron. https://www.foxnews.com/politi... [foxnews.com]
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That's cute! Especially when one of the links -- clearly spelled out -- is to WSJ.