Quote from Ivanovich:
I know I'll get flak for this, ...
Well, with all due respect Mr. Ivanovich - here's your flak.
Nevermind all of the arbitrage issues and etc. Just a basic question or two.
According to the author, firms with long positions on the NYMEX want to see the prices higher. They are presumably maxed out at the 20,000 contract net futures limit. So they go to an alternate exchange that allows them to buy more - like the ICE.
So let's say Morgan and Goldman are long 20k contracts each on the NYMEX. They agree to each buy 5k contracts on ICE before NYMEX opens to run the price up.
Now ... they are doing this to run prices up so that they can sell their NYMEX positions, right? So after running the prices up, they possibly make a small profit on their ICE positions. But they also have to sell some of their NYMEX positions to benefit from their scheme. Let's say they each want to book a profit on 5k of their NYMEX positions.
So after running prices up overnight on ICE, they each sell the 5k ICE contracts that they used to run up the prices and then they each sell another 5k contracts on the NYMEX to book a profit on their scheme.
In summary, MS and GS combine to buy 10K of futures "over the counter" to run up the price overnight. After achieving this, they sell the 10k contracts of "over the counter" futures plus another combined 10k contracts of NYMEX positions.
According to the author:
Their combined buying of 10k contracts drives the price up.
And ... their combined SELLING of 20K contracts drives the price UP too !!!
Or at least, by his logic, the selling of 20k does not have the same impact as the buying of 10k ... 10k of buying drives the price up a buck, 20k of selling only takes it down 50 cents.
Why is this so, my friend?
