The silver price fix debacle from last week and the new London silver price fix has received a litany of severe criticism in recent days.
Perth Mint research director Bron Suchecki has done an excellent piece where he gathers together these “damming” criticisms and sums up the severe challenges facing the new silver price fix.
Since my article on the LBMA Silver Price on Friday, more market participants have come out criticising the process:
Afshin Nabavi, MKS: “People are going to lose all faith in the fix if this keeps going.”
Brad Yates, Elemetal: “When Thursday’s number came in, people initially thought CME would void it, it was so far out of line with the market. When they endorsed it and it became the official print, the benchmark immediately lost credibility. We had two clients shift business away from pricing on the fix to live pricing.”
Simon Grenfell, Natixis: “The new silver price setting mechanism appears broken. It is clearly an issue that the regulator should be looking at.”
Grzegorz Laskowski, KGHM: “The large discrepancy between the spot price and the fix is very alarming to us especially that it happened twice in a row. I think the LBMA needs to make every effort to explain why it happened and needs to help to develop a system that would help to avoid these kind of situations in the future.”
He concludes that the new silver fix is at risk of heading into a “death spiral” and that the future of the fix is fraught.
Bron Suchecki’s blog can be found on the Perth Mint blog here
Precious Metal Prices
3 Feb: USD 1,130.00, EUR 1,034.04 and GBP 781.25 per ounce
2 Feb: USD 1,123.60, EUR 1,029.65 and GBP 780.01 per ounce
1 Feb: USD 1,122.00, EUR 1,032.86 and GBP 785.60 per ounce
29 Jan: USD 1,112.90, EUR 1,019.89 and GBP 776.84 per ounce
28 Jan: USD 1,119.00, EUR 1,026.14 and GBP 781.59 per ounce
Mark O'Byrne, GoldCore.com
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