Dear Silver Stackers, I am pleased to pass on some promising news regarding possible redress of losses on your gold investments specifically since 2004. A class action launched this year against five banks for gold market manipulation reaches an important milestone on December 15th, when litigants will lodge their revised complaint. GATA the Gold Anti-trust Action Committee has published an invitation to anyone who has suffered a loss trading gold or gold futures or options since 2004 to join the class action and advise the legal representatives for the class action by email as soon as possible. Here is the link to the invitation with the relevant email address: http://www.gata.org/node/14674 As a possible indication of the strength of these allegations, in May this year Barlcay's were fined over failings in the London gold fixing: https://fca.org.uk/news/barclays-fined-26m-for-failings-surrounding-the-london-gold-fixing And in a separate case, this week Swiss Bank UBS has settled with regulators on the allegations of gold market manipulation. Reinforcing the seriousness of the allegations, yesterday the Swiss regulator revealed they had found "clear attempts" that UBS tried to manipulate precious metals benchmarks: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/banks-forex-settlement-gold-idUSL6N0T22Z420141112 For those affected, the email address for inquiry's at law firm Berger & Montague about joining the class action is: [email protected] Source: Kind Regards, Chuckey
Someone asked me the question rather than reading the links, but I thought it would still be helpful to clarify, this case is specifically about alleged manipulation of the London gold fix benchmark by the 5 member banks.
How big was (is?) this manipulation? Is it +-0.5% of the price or +-30% of the price? If it's too small then nobody cares. Yes, they shave their peanuts off the market, but overall price distortions are too small to make any difference. If it's about 30% of the price, then it's completely different story.
For big players, yes. But for small fish like us? Especially that few of us trade daily to notice such a small difference anyway.
The news is I have been advised that unfortunately this class action is only for trading which occurred on US soil. Rather strange considering the alleged manipulation took place in the UK. but here is the explanation from Berger Montague; "The London gold fix is not a market. It is merely a benchmark price. The United States Supreme Court has held that we are limited to suing over injuries that occurred in United States. This is based on the fact that if injury occurred outside of the United States then it is best left to courts outside the United States to deal with. Of course there are exceptions to that general rule, but here we are limited to suing over injury to United States investments caused by the London gold fix benchmark being manipulated. If your injuries were to investments based in Australia then you are left to seek redress in Australia's courts."