CME Stays Silent on Cause of COMEX Silver Price Glitch

Silver futures prices on the COMEX futures trading platform briefly plummeted at approximately 7:06am Singapore time yesterday, with the price for the front month (most active) September silver contract falling from a US$16.06 quote down to a low of US$14.34 all within  a 1 minute interval. The futures price then recovered nearly all of its losses in the subsequent 2-3 minute period. High to low, this COMEX silver futures contract saw its price fall by just over 10.7%, before rebounding nearly 11%.

During this time when the COMEX price crashed, there was nothing fundamentally happening in the wider financial markets, or indeed in the physical silver market, to justify these price gyrations in COMEX silver futures prices. Which all goes to show that the COMEX ‘paper’ futures silver prices is completely detached from the physical silver market, and that COMEX silver futures prices have no anchoring in the real silver market.

This price movement in the September 2017 silver futures contract (contract code SIU7 aka SIU17) can be seen in the below 1-minute tick candlestick chart from CME. Times in the chart are New York Time (NYT), which is 12 hours behind Singapore.

During this one minute period between 19:06 NYT and 19:07 NYT, the SIU7 contract saw trading volume of 4954 contracts (the 4.954K in the chart below), with the price falling from a high of 16.065 to a low of 14.34, before ending that minute period at US$ 14.68.

The COMEX SI silver futures contract, which is a deliverable contract but which in practice is rarely delivered; is a futures contract for 5000 troy ounces of silver. The 4954 contracts traded during the 1 minute period in theory represent 24.77 million ounces (770 tonnes) of silver and would be valued at $397.8 million at the opening price of US$ 16.06 at 19:06 NYT.

Overall within these 4 minutes, more than 8,300 September silver contracts were traded.

Following this 1 minute flash crash, in the subsequent minute between 19:07 NYT and 19:08 NYT,  the SIU7 contract price rebounded sharply, rising from US$ 14.67 to US$ 15.62 on a trading volume of 1495 contracts. This rebound reflected in the below chart which also shows the opening and closing prices of each minute period. The price continue to rebound between 19:08 and 19:09 on volume of 936 contracts to close the minute at US$ 15.07, and then between 19:09 and 19:10, the price again closed higher at US$ 15.90 on volume of 932 contracts.

Overall, from the low quote of US$ 14.34, the price had rebound within the next 3 minutes to US$ 15.90, a rebound of 10.95%, and just 1% lower than the price had been (US$ 16.06) 4 minutes earlier.

Note that the same price flash crash also affected the next most actively traded COMEX silver contract for December 2017 (code SIZ7). See COMEX silver futures summary table below, and notice the lows for the September 2017 and December 2017 contracts at US$ 14.34 and US$ 14.44, respectively.

What caused this momentary price plummet in the COMEX silver futures is not clear. This is because the CME Group, operator of the COMEX futures platform, has provided no explanation for these price gyrations. Possible causes could include market illiquidity, deliberate manipulation, a trading error or errors, or algorithmic trading programs triggering stop losses or inducing abnormal trading patterns.

Until the CME Group releases a statement on this (which it probably won’t), the exact cause of this futures price flash crash remains unclear. What the CME did do yesterday however was as follows:

At 19:06:38, the CME systems implemented a 10 second halt in the COMEX silver futures contracts. Within 20 minutes, CME made an announcement in a messaging broadcast that it was reviewing all SIU7 (September futures) trades that had taken place under US$ 15.84 and all SIZ7 (December futures) trades that had taken place under US$ 15.94. After another 20 minutes, CME announced in a messaging broadcast that for SIU7, any trades executed below US$ 15.54 would be adjusted up to US$ 15.54, while for SIZ7, all trades executed below 15.64 would be adjusted up to US$ 15.64.

These speedily introduced price adjustments would appear to suggest that the CME Group quickly determined that whatever caused the sharp price falls in the COMEX silver futures prices was not part of normal COMEX futures market trading, and that the CME made the call to back out and cancel at least some of the effects of this abnormal market trading. This would also seem to suggest the CME found evidence of something untoward, either price manipulation, or unfair algorithmic trading, or unjustified stop-loss triggering etc.

While these ‘paper’ trading markets in the form of the OTC London silver market and the COMEX futures market unfortunately do have a real impact on the international silver price that is inherited by these physical markets, this latest pricing fiasco on the COMEX again demonstrates that COMEX trading of precious metals futures and London trading of fractionally-backed unallocated precious metals spot and forwards contracts are becoming more and more detached from the underlying reality of the physical gold and silver markets.

This also has an adverse effect on investor sentiment in these paper markets and could in time be a trigger for shifting gold price discovery from paper to physical.