China Daily reports that trading volume of silver forwards on the Shanghai Gold Exchange has soared 751% YOY. Buried in the article, they also state that China's biggest bank has also launched paper silver trading, and the trading volume of paper silver products reached 300 tons for the first 6 months of 2011, 4 times the TOTAL AMOUNT for 2010...roughly an 8-fold increase!
Clearly the banksters are panicking about the prospects of 1 Billion Chinese savers vacuuming up the little remaining PHYSICAL silver available.
The trading volume of silver forwards on the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), China's only exchange for the precious metal, surged 751 percent year-on-year in 2010. Meanwhile, the volume in September this year was more than six times that of the same period in 2010.
The boom has come in tandem with a prolonged rally in silver prices, with the SGE's major Ag (T+D) contract rising about 60 percent year-on-year to 7,208 yuan ($1,163) on Monday.
In August last year, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC), China's biggest lender, launched paper silver trading for individual investors. Other banks soon followed suit. The trading volume of ICBC's paper silver products reached 300 tons in the first half, almost four times the figure for the whole of 2010.
The price of silver has been so volatile that the SGE adjusted margins on silver forward contracts six times in May. Margins were raised to as high as 20 percent on May 6, following the April 28 setback.
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