Bill,
Regarding the simultaneous bit and size change in Sept and July, it could be automated spread legging against visible or non-visible bids and offers in either futures or options. The HFT has made things crazy in terms of speed.

Best regards,

CIGA David G ….

  Thank you Bill for sharing and please thank CIGA David G for his input. 

 I’ve thought of this as well, even if it was high frequency trading, a trade would have to happen at a specific price both inside the specified contracts, and it would have to register in the Volumes and Open Interest + or - (but alas). This is the point I was trying to make, there are no registered trades for these posts. Are these the supposed EFP’s going to London or spoofing or? And if so, then they (these unregistered trades) control all the prices, not the COMEX traders. Also of note the combined amounts (of these spoofs?) are so high throughout the day, it would dwarf all Open Interest numbers as well as the Volumes and by many degrees of measure. These trades, if posted, would blow out the numbers we’ve been watching all these years to the moon and back. 

I’ve spoken to the exchange as well, I asked this “expert” (who has never traded and is not a registered broker but has been there for years) if these are possibly “dark pool” operations or “sovereign” trades. He directed me to the fraud division after he told me the same thing CIGA David stated.

   If these are HFT and they do not register a buy or a sell, did the trade really happen? At the close of Comex, we had 7 trades registered inside a trading range between $15.185 and $15.055 within the July delivery month. The volumes of these “ghost or spoof trades” would probably be outrageous … here’s my supporting math. IF I added the “Bid” quotes I gave Friday morning of these spoofs and multiply it by the length of time COMEX trades it would look like this : 46+21+28+19+8+36 = 158 (trades within one minute) X 1,320 minutes (that Comex trades, 22 hours a day x 60 ) = 208,560 unregistered trades in the month of July. Here’s an additional disclaimer; I only quoted the first numbers I saw within the first seconds (+ or –) of that minute I claimed in my write-up. 

Thank you so much for your input …. If you have any more thoughts on the subject, please offer them up.

Stay Strong!
J. Johnson