By Joseph Cafariello
Wealth Daily
A new era has begun in the silver market. The 117-year old silver price fixing mechanism was replaced on Monday by a new electronic pricing system, and many have hailed the change as the beginning of an era of transparency in precious metals pricing.
Others, though, wonder if anything will change at all. For years suspicions of price manipulation by the fix’s member banks have beefn fuelled by the secrecy of the fixing process — where member banks haggle on a price via telephone conference until reaching an agreement amongst themselves, the resulting “fixed” price then being imposed on the entire global marketplace for all to trade by.
In an effort to dispel such suspicions, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange — the home of the new electronic silver fixing auction — is providing six months of free data access to interested lookie-loos. The public now gets to see numbers flashing on a board until the member banks come to an agreement.