Caneorange said:
wrcmad said:
Caneorange said:
Swap dealers are counterparty to metal swaps.
Read that on google already. What does that mean?
Well, maybe your fingers are broken? I'll assist with the rest of your google search:
Gold swaps are usually the simultaneous spot sale of gold with a forward transaction to buy the same amount back at a later date. For governments and central banks it has become a way either of raising cash to meet short contingencies or simply to invest the money on an interest-bearing basis. The gold itself has become an important source of liquidity to the market. The swap technique has been used in particular by gold mining producers - instead of selling the gold outright they can swap it to provide immediate liquidity. Gold swaps are where the gold lender pays the borrower a rate of interest. Because storing physical bullion safely isn't cost-free (even if it is very cheap). Gold owners also miss out on the interest rate which holding cash instead would provide.
So if you want someone to swap your gold for its cash value today, and swap back sometime in the future, they will then bear two costs storage fees and lost interest in the meantime. So they might reasonably expect you to pay them to take it away.
This is not gold leasing. In gold leasing there is a lender and a borrower of metal, and the borrower pays the lender a rate of interest. It's always positive to the lender, because it's an unsecured loan. So the rate of interest depends on the borrower's credit-worthiness.
The Swap dealer is the entity that deals primarily in swaps for a commodity and who acts as the counterparty in a swap agreement for a fee called a spread. Swap dealers are the market makers for the swap market, and use the futures markets to manage or hedge the risk associated with those swaps transactions.
The swap dealer's counter parties may be speculative traders, like hedge funds, or traditional commercial clients that are managing risk arising from their dealings in the physical commodity. It's worth noting that the bulk of their positions are passively managed and passively managed generally also means non-leveraged. The Swap dealers are also not making a one-way bet using futures, but instead use futures to hedge their swaps.
If a Swap Dealer is using short futures to hedge, then the dealer has a long position on the other side. How does the Swaps Dealer get a long position? He has a client who wants a short position via swap. The client goes short on swap vs the Swap dealer who goes long on swap. That's the first trade. The next trade, the hedge, is for the Swap dealer to hedge his risk on the COMEX (or elsewhere) by getting short exposure.