Platinum Fixing Under the Microscope
By GCRU Gold News on Thursday, September 11 2014, 01:11 - Permalink
For the further examination we will limit ourselves to studying the interval between 9:00am and 9:05am (the “fixing period”). Any manipulations that take place at other times – including those in the minutes preceding the fixing – are not pursued further at this juncture. We thus analyze the price movements of the five-minute interval between 9:00am, the beginning of the fixing, to 9:05am, the time when the downward move on the average intra-day price chart ends. During this time period, the strongest part of the decline occurs. The PM fixing takes place concurrently.
The study includes the price moves of altogether 4189 days – a time period of 16 years. On average, platinum prices fell by 0.0272% in the five minutes of the afternoon fixing. Given that platinum actually rose from $376 to $1,440 during those years, a slight increase would normally have been expected. During the 4189 fixing phases there have been 1730 price increases and 2195 price declines. 271 times prices remained unchanged. One would have at least expected as many price increases as declines. Statistically, there is therefore an excess of 236 price declines at a minimum. A coincidence?