Depending on how it is manipulated, presented or interpreted, a set of data can be used to validate almost any theory or conclusion. For example, as I explained HERE, by changing the starting assumption the intraday London gold price data can be used to ‘prove’ either long-term suppression of the gold price or long-term elevation of the gold price. For another example, as I showed HERE, by cherry-picking the timescale of the data it is possible to demonstrate a relationship (in this case a relationship between the gold price and the US federal-debt/GDP ratio) that wouldn’t be apparent if a different timescale were chosen. I’ll now discuss a new example that was part of a 12th March article at Marketwatch.com.

I agree with the gist of the above-linked Marketwatch article, which is that the US stock market is stretched to the upside in a big way. However, the chart used in the article to make this point is a great example of data mining. Here is the chart.

The chart uses a 6-year rate of change (ROC) to suggest that the US stock market is almost as extended to the upside as it was at the top of the late-1990s mania, but why a 6-year ROC? Why not a 7-year or a 5-year ROC?

The answer is that only a 6-year ROC creates the impression that the author wants. A chart showing a 7-year ROC, for example, would actually appear to support an opposing view — that the market is not remotely stretched to the upside. As evidence I present the following chart of the Dow’s 7-year ROC. It makes the market look cheap!

The reason that the 6-year ROC works so well to support the view that the market is dramatically extended to the upside is that the bottom of the major 2007-2009 bear market occurred exactly 6 years ago. What you are seeing in the past year’s spectacular rise in the market’s 6-year ROC is the reverse of the 2008-2009 crash. Even if the US stock market had traded sideways over the past year, the extraordinary market collapse of 2008-2009 would have ensured a moonshot in the 6-year ROC.

To put it another way, the near-vertical rise in the 6-year ROC over the past 12 months reflects the waterfall decline that happened many years ago. It does not reflect a manic upside blow-off in the current market.

If the market trades sideways from here then a year from now the 7-year ROC will show the moonshot that the 6-year ROC currently shows.

Some commentators who claim that the gold price has been relentlessly and successfully suppressed over many decades cite something they call the “London Bias” to support their claim. For example, a recent article by Ed Steer puts the London Bias forward as evidence of long-term price suppression. However, what the so-called “London Bias” actually proves is that some pundits who want to present evidence of unidirectional price manipulation are not above using data manipulation. As I’ve previously said, by carefully mining the data you can ‘validate’ almost any theory, even the most cockamamie one.

The idea behind the London Bias is that there is a tendency for the London PM gold fix to be lower than the London AM gold fix. The result is that you would have lost money almost every year, through gold bull markets and gold bear markets, by simply buying a position at the London gold AM Fix every day and selling the position at the London PM Fix the same day. More specifically, here’s how it’s described in the above-linked article:

“…if you invested $100 at the London a.m. gold fix on January 2, 1970, sold your position at the London p.m. gold fix the same day, then reinvested the proceeds the next day at the London a.m. fix and sold at the p.m. fix once again — and did that every business day for 45 years in a row — you’d have had the magnificent sum of $12.13 in your trading account at the close of business on February 27, 2015.

…from January 2, 1975 going forward and with the exception of only a couple of years between 1975 and 1980, the yearly London price bias in gold has been negative ever since — for more than two generations. In other words, since January 2, 1975 — and with the very odd exception in the interim — the gold price has closed for a loss between the London a.m. and p.m. gold fixes for 40 years in a row regardless of what was happening in the overall gold market.”

The blue line on the following sharelynx.com chart illustrates how someone would have fared if they had started with $100 and then bought/sold at the daily fixes as described above. The yellow line on the chart is the US$ gold price.

Can anyone spot the problem with the assertion that the “London Bias” proves long-term downward manipulation of the gold price?

There’s more than one problem, but the main one is that exactly the same data could be used to prove long-term UPWARD manipulation of the gold price. Here’s why:

The assumption underlying the claim that the London Bias shows relentless downward manipulation is that the London AM Fix is the right price and that downward manipulation regularly occurs between the two fixes, leading to the London PM Fix consistently being lower than it should be. This assumption is groundless. An equally valid (meaning: equally groundless) assumption would be that the London PM Fix is the right price and that upward manipulation occurs between the two fixes, leading to the London AM Fix consistently being higher than it should be. In this case the logic would be that the manipulators get to work boosting the gold price during the relatively thin trading hours, leading to an artificially high London AM fix, and that the price settles back to its correct level during the higher-volume trading hours.

Based on the second assumption, a chart could be constructed to illustrate the financial extent of the upward manipulation. The chart would assume that $100 was invested at the London PM gold fix on January 2, 1970, and sold at the London AM gold fix the following day, with the proceeds then reinvested later that day at the London PM fix, and so on, for every business day for 45 years in a row. The chart would show a huge return on investment thanks to the positive “London Bias”.

The point is that depending on your starting assumption, the same London gold-price data could be used to illustrate long-term price suppression or long-term price elevation. That is, you could assume that there is a negative bias in the PM Fix or you could just as validly/invalidly assume that there is a positive bias in the AM Fix. Alternatively, you could assume that the data is indicative of a market characteristic that has nothing to do with manipulation in either direction.

Clearly, there are people analysing the gold market who have a very strong belief that a successful, long-term price suppression scheme has been operated in this market. These people are eager to interpret data in a way that supports their belief. This is a bias that YOU should be aware of.

You can obviously choose to believe whatever you want, but if you choose to believe that powerful forces have both the motivation and the ability to suppress the gold price over the long term then it would be irrational of you to be involved in the gold market on the ‘long’ side. So, why are you?

When the Fed gave itself the ability to pay interest on bank reserves, it gave itself the ability to hike its targeted short-term interest rate (the Fed Funds rate) without tightening monetary conditions. In other words, it gave itself the ability to tighten monetary policy in the eyes of the world without actually tightening monetary policy. That’s one reason why it’s absurd that almost everyone involved in the financial markets is intensely focused on the timing of the Fed’s first 0.25% upward adjustment in the Funds Rate. It’s not only that a 0.25% increase is trivial, but also that, thanks to the payment of interest on bank reserves, it will almost certainly be implemented without making the monetary backdrop any less ‘accommodative’.

I’ve dealt with this topic a number of times at TSI, most recently last week. Here’s what I wrote last week under the heading “Why the Fed pays interest on bank reserves”:

“The Fed’s reason for paying interest on bank reserves has been addressed in previous TSI commentaries, but it’s an important issue and worthy of additional commentary space. That’s especially so because there is so much confusion surrounding the issue. In particular, the actual reason for the interest payments is at odds with the beliefs/assumptions of many journalists, newsletter writers and other commentators on financial matters.

Before getting to the real reason we’ll deal with the two most common false beliefs. The first of these is that the Fed started paying interest on bank reserves to prevent the commercial banks from rapidly expanding their loan books in reaction to the Fed-generated ballooning of reserves from Q4-2008 onwards. The second is that the main purpose of the interest payments is to provide financial support to the banks.

There is no truth to the first belief, because the interest payments on reserves have no effect on either the ability or the willingness of banks to make loans. The facts are that a) reserves cannot be loaned into the economy, b) there has been no relationship between US bank reserves and US bank lending for decades, and c) even if the amount of bank lending were influenced by the level of reserves as wrongly explained in outdated economics textbooks, an increase in a bank’s lending would not affect the amount of interest earned by the bank on its reserves. This last point is due to the fact that an increase in a bank’s loan book could shift reserves from the “excess” to the “required” category, but wouldn’t affect its total reserves. The Fed, however, pays interest on ALL reserves, not just “excess” reserves.

There is some truth to the second belief in that the payment of interest on reserves does provide some additional income to the banks. However, even with today’s massive reserve levels the financial impact on the banks is trivial (at the current interest rate we are talking about $6B/year of reserve-related interest payments across the entire banking industry, which is a veritable drop in the ocean).

The real reason that the Fed began paying interest on bank reserves in late-2008 was to enable it to maintain control of the Fed Funds Rate (the overnight interest rate on reserves in the inter-bank market and the primary rate targeted by Fed monetary policy) while it pumped huge volumes of dollars into the economy and into the reserve accounts of banks.

To further explain, prior to the extraordinary measures taken by the Fed in late-2008 in reaction to the global financial crisis, the Fed Funds Rate (FFR) could be adjusted by making small changes to reserves. However, after the Fed began pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves into the banks, the central bank was in danger of losing its ability to control the FFR. With the commercial banks inundated with reserves and with plans in place for additional rapid monetary expansion, it became clear to the Fed that even maintaining an extremely low FFR of 0.25% was going to be impossible. Furthermore, the Fed was thinking ahead to the time when it would have to start hiking the FFR. With reserve levels way in excess of what they needed to be to set the FFR at 0.25%, even the superficially minor task of pushing the FFR back up to 0.50% would, under the Fed’s traditional way of operating, necessitate a large-enough contraction of bank reserves and the money supply to bring about another financial crisis.

Think of it this way: In October of 2008 the FFR was at 1% and the total level of US bank reserves was $315B. This suggests that $315B was consistent with an FFR of 1%. Today, the total level of bank reserves is about $2.5T. The implication is that to get the FFR back up to 1% the Fed would have to remove about $2.2T of covered money ($2.2T of money ‘backed’ by $2.2T of bank reserves) from the US economy, but there is no way that it could remove that amount without crashing the financial markets and the economy. Actually, we doubt that it could even remove a quarter of that sum without precipitating a stock market collapse and a severe recession.

This problem was obvious to Bernanke, and his solution was to pay interest on reserves. With this new tool in its kit the Fed gained the ability to set the FFR at whatever level it wanted without adjusting bank reserves and the economy-wide money supply. For example, if the Fed decides in the future that it wants the FFR at 1%, it could achieve this target by simply changing the interest rate on reserves to 1% while leaving reserve and money-supply quantities untouched.

A likely ramification of the Fed’s ability to control the FFR via the interest rate on bank reserves is that the Fed’s balance sheet has reached a permanently high plateau. There will be no traditional tightening of monetary policy in the foreseeable future.”

The Wall Street Journal recently broke the story that there is evidence of banks attempting to manipulate the prices of gold and other precious metals. In other breaking news, evidence has emerged that the Earth revolves around the sun, that the Pope is Catholic, and that bears sometimes defecate in the woods.

Kid Dynamite is happy that regulators are finally taking note, as he has studiously documented evidence of upward manipulation of the gold price for years, to seemingly no avail. Actually, what he has done is show that the same sorts of price/volume changes in the gold futures market that are routinely put forward to ‘prove’ downward manipulation can also be used to ‘prove’ upward manipulation. By carefully mining the data it is possible to validate almost any theory, even a ridiculous one.

In any case, my purpose in writing this post is not to delve into the murky world of gold-market manipulation theories, but to point out that “manipulation” is often a poorly chosen word. To manipulate is to skillfully influence or change to one’s advantage. As such, manipulation could be a legitimate business practice. In the financial markets, for example, there is generally nothing ethically wrong with a private (meaning: non-government) trader buying or selling with the aim of influencing the price. Trading with the express purpose of driving the price up or down will usually not lead to a profit, but one person’s reasons for buying or selling are not the business of anyone else.

“Manipulation” therefore doesn’t imply “wrong” or “unfair”. Other words must consequently be used to distinguish between the manipulation that could form part of legitimate business practice and the manipulation that involves a violation of property rights and/or a breach of fiduciary duty. Fraud is a good word. For example, if banks siphon money from their customers to themselves by front-running their customers’ orders or by misusing information given to them in confidence by their customers, as was alleged in a lawsuit filed by a jewellery firm last November, then the banks are engaging in fraud, not just manipulation.

Manipulation is not inherently wrong. Fraud, by definition, is.