Gold officially closed (1:30 pm est comex closing) at $1556.00 up $25.20 for the day. Silver was all over the map, closed at $48.58 for a gain of $1.06. Silver reacted to the news of a second margin hike announced late Thursday night which was to take effect at the comex market close at 1:30 Friday. This is the second hike in silver margins. Here is the official announcement by the CME (courtesy Dow Jones News Wires)
CME Increases Trading Margins Amid Silver's Volatile Ride

By Tatyana Shumsky
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Exchange operator CME Group Inc. (CME) raised margins for Comex silver futures for the second time this week as silver prices soar amid much volatility.
The higher margins take effect at the close of trading Friday, the exchange said. The CME revises its margin requirements as a normal course of business, and has previously raised bond requirements during times of high volatility to guard traders against additional risk. The operator owns New York Mercantile Exchange, which trades silver on its Comex division.
For speculators in the benchmark 5,000-ounce silver futures contract, the exchange is raising initial margin requirements, or the deposit required to purchase a contract, to $14,513 per contract, up from $12,825. Maintenance margin requirements, or the additional capital needed to keep the contract overnight, will increase to $10,750, from $9,500.
For hedgers and exchange members, both the initial and maintenance margin requirements will also increase to $10,750 from $9,500 per contract.
CME also raised margins for the Comex silver trade at settle contracts, which allow traders to lock in the day's settlement price for their purchases or sales.
Additionally, the exchange raised initial and maintenance margins for Comex Miny silver futures and the E-Mini silver futures contracts.
Thursday's increase follows a similar margin increase Monday, and comes during the astonishing volatility in silver prices. Silver posted another huge price swing Thursday, with the front-month contract rising 3.4% to a record settlement of $47.520 a troy ounce. Investors have been flocking to this relatively small market to take advantage of the metal's much lower price than that of gold, which is sky high.
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The increase in margins spooked both longs and shorts as the cost of leverage in the metal rose. It now costs $14,500 in initial margins and another $10,750 for maintenance ( if you keep the contract overnight). For long holders to keep their positions, one needs over 25,000 thousand dollars or a little over 10% of the contract of $245,000. (49 x 5000 oz). The margin hike is thus justified to keep leverage in tow.
Let us head over to the comex and see how trading fared yesterday.
As mentioned above, gold finished trading at $1556.00 but in the access market it zoomed again and finished at $1,565.70 for a gain of almost 30 dollars for the day. Silver in the access market felt the weight of new margin requirements and fell to $47.94.
The total gold comex OI fell by 5174 contracts from 537,619 to 532,636 which of course is basis Thursday night. Gold advanced nicely on Thursday so we are getting a few bankers covering their shorts. The noose is getting tighter and tighter for them on both precious metals. The front options expiry month of May for gold saw its OI fall from 457 to 202. It is this figure that I will use as amount standing for gold. There may have been some cash settlements here because we had every tiny deliveries of 19 sent down for first day notice. It continued again on the second day with only 1 delivery notice filed late last night. The next battleground will be the June gold month as this month is the second biggest gold delivery month for the year. The total OI for the front month of June saw its OI fall from 352,958 to 348,115. This is probably where our bankers reduced some of their short positions. The estimated volume at the gold comex yesterday was surprisingly small at 113,335. I guess those who demanded gold came in contact with short sellers (and thus buyers) . We had a dearth of sellers yesterday which will explain the huge rise in the price of gold.
And now silver:
The total open interest on the silver comex fell steeply by 6,132 contracts from 135,763 to 129,712. There is no doubt that the leverage for the longs suffered a bit but so did those shorts that have to pay margin requirements. This created much volatility on the silver price yesterday. All eyes are on the front delivery month of May were the open interest stands at 2166 contracts or 10.83 million oz. The options that were exercised were given future contracts on Friday night and will be reflected in the numbers on Monday. I believe that Blythe will be some busy lady this weekend. The next battleground front month for silver is July and the OI rose from 76,365 to 78,060. We still have a long way off until we hit this trading month. The estimated volume at the silver comex was good at 77,167. The confirmed volume on Thursday, the day before first day notice was 226,267 where we witnessed most of the silver longs rolling to July and September.

J'ai toujours pensé que la hausse des appels de marge est plus bénéfique au métal en phase de bull market, que le contraire. Pour la simple raison que pour qu'une position short existe, il lui faut automatiquement une position longue en face.

Bonne lecture.

J'ajouterai : c'est la mise que tu paies pour avoir le droit de spéculer. Si tu laisses le contrat arriver à échéance, il faut payer le restant, et prendre livraison du physique (sur un contrat long par exemple). Mais la plupart des intervenants sont des purs spéculateurs et vendent donc le contrat "future" avant son échéance. D'ailleurs tous les futures fonctionnent pareil.

Le pb, c'est que les prix des mat prem en général ont été "comprimé" pendant des années, artificiellement. Le cas le plus flagrant, en dehors des métaux précieux, est celui du cuivre.