Interesting development. A bit hyped in these articles, but...

Interesting development. A bit hyped in these articles, but London (and its associated country) has been under a cloud for some time over gold price fixing, and its regulators for saying they are investigating -- without results. (At least they got somewhere with both LIBOR and the exchange rate rackets.) Anyone watching daily gold gyrations will see the volatility between 8am and 11am NY time, which is apparently when the London gold price fix occurs (late afternoon in London). Even the name "fix" strikes a sour note.

But there's much more than price distortion from a few London bankers. The gold ETF enables traders to get in and out of gold on a whim, which has become such a problem that the gold companies encoring that ETF's creation (e.g. Barrick) now say it was a mistake. But better an open exchange affected by distorted realities than the clubby bunch in London. The Shanghai Gold Exchange will apparently still be for instos and governments, but at least a larger pool of players in a transparent process. Ironic that China, not London, will likely make the process more democratic.

Meanwhile, MML's underlying valuation is finally getting the attention of serious investors and traders. It's still less than half of its price last year even though now with much higher probability of stronger profitability.