Sell-Off of Gold, Silver, Oil Is Due to Margin Hike in Oil, Not Because of Gaddafi Being Shot

(There is no such news at Al Jazeera.)

So the likely timeline was:

1. Oil margins were hiked;

2. Oil plunged, taking other commodities including gold and silver with it;

3. Seeing that, equity traders speculated that Gaddafi must have been shot, in their effort to come up with the explanation for the oil drop before they heard about the margin hike;

4. But the momentum already triggered algo bots to go into "buy buy buy" mode.

They do anything and everything to prop up the stock market. Lies? What lies?

(Gaddafi's shooting alright, his forces are shooting hospital patients dead in Tripoli.)

For the true reason for the sell-off in the commodity space, here's Zero Hedge:

ICE Hikes Oil Margins For Second Time In A Week

And now, for the real reason for the oil plunge: the ICE has just announced it is hiking oil margins for the second time this week, this time increasing both Brent and WTI margins. The new Brent scanning range is 5200 compared to 4850 before, while the Oil WTI 1st month contract is hiked from 600 to 900. We expect the NYMEX will follow suit on its own WTI contract any minute. As usual, we continue to patiently await the Globex to hike margin requirements on the ES. The most recent update of the ICE Brent Scanning range and Tiering can be found here.

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