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geoffreysambrook
Jan 20, 2016
Benevolent No More
The London Metal Exchange Benevolent Fund is being wound up, after over a hundred years. I suppose I’m probably fairly typical in that...
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geoffreysambrook
Jan 13, 2016
Regulation – or Compliance – at Fault? (And David Bowie)
Financial market regulators come in for quite a lot of criticism, very often well deserved, but on occasion they are not actually the...
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geoffreysambrook
Jan 6, 2016
China Disappointment
“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” Those two lines (from ‘The Hollow Men’) are probably the most quoted...
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geoffreysambrook
Dec 30, 2015
Politics Provided the Light Relief in 2015
2015 has been a pretty miserable year for investors. No asset class really stood out as providing more than a mediocre return, and in...
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geoffreysambrook
Dec 23, 2015
Merry Ghosts of Christmas Past
When people reach a certain age in every generation, we are liable to hear the words – ‘things were much better in my day’, and we know...
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geoffreysambrook
Dec 16, 2015
Cut Production? Or Reduce Costs?
A conversation with a fund manager started me thinking the other day. Talking about the distressed nature of the commodity markets at the...
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geoffreysambrook
Dec 9, 2015
Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind
A new concept seems to be creeping into the trading vocabulary – ‘malicious short-selling’ first reared its head as a problem for the...
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geoffreysambrook
Dec 2, 2015
Statues, and Changing History
George Orwell is a wonderfully quotable author. Think of ‘1984’, ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Big Brother is watching you’, ‘all animals are equal,...
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geoffreysambrook
Nov 25, 2015
Goldenman to the Rescue!
This week, Richard Horswill proposes a radical shift in the world’s monetary system. Is it a stock picker? Is it a bond buyer? No, it’s...
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geoffreysambrook
Nov 18, 2015
Plus ça change….
Some things change; others look for a while as if they are doing so, but, standing back, we get to see that actually they are but a part...
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geoffreysambrook
Nov 11, 2015
Grab a Dreamcoat
Wouldn’t it be convenient if we could find a Joseph (preferably with a coat of many colours rather than an amazing technicolour dreamcoat...
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geoffreysambrook
Nov 4, 2015
Singing the LME Week Blues
This week, James van Bregt takes a counter-intuitive view of the LME Week phenomenon. The annual stand-and-shout extravaganza that is LME...
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geoffreysambrook
Oct 28, 2015
The Trouble with VW was that their Porkies were Green not White
Wouldn’t it be great if the VW crisis (which was essentially caused by the pretence of greenness, and therefore a green lie not a white...
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geoffreysambrook
Oct 21, 2015
The LME, the Ring – and Arbitration
There are a couple of LME matters that are perhaps worth a look. First, there’s the slightly thorny issue of the long-term existence of...
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geoffreysambrook
Oct 14, 2015
How Much Metal Does a Man Need?
I often think of Tolstoy’s story, ‘How much land does a man need?’ (1886) in relation to the sometimes vast ambition of metal people. ...
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geoffreysambrook
Oct 7, 2015
LME Dinner Week 2015 – Shadows Loom
October 2015; another LME Dinner Week looms. It’s difficult to imagine that it will be an event bringing unfettered joy and celebration...
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geoffreysambrook
Sep 30, 2015
The True Cost of Manipulation
It was a great wheeze wasn’t it? Buy up a few LME warehouses. Stuff them with metal and make it difficult for title-owners to deliver...
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geoffreysambrook
Sep 23, 2015
Miners and Bankers – an Unholy Alliance
I think the mining community must be the most optimistic bunch of people on earth. After all, they look at the dirt in a hole in the...
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geoffreysambrook
Sep 16, 2015
The Nervous(?) Nine
A while ago, I wrote a piece on this website talking about the legacy of Metallgesellschaft Ltd and its evolution through various...
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geoffreysambrook
Sep 9, 2015
Dignitas for Metal Merchants
Is there an answer to the question of succession for private metal trading companies? Or is corporate euthanasia the only alternative? In...
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