Did an insider bet on rand?
Spike in futures contracts hours before fall seen as circumstantial evidence of front running, but traders not sure
Did someone with insider information in the foreign exchange market on March 27 profit by backing a weaker rand before the news broke that President Jacob Zuma was recalling the then finance minister Pravin Gordhan from his international investor roadshow? There was evidence for this, said Intellidex chairman Stuart Theobald, referring to the sharp spike in the volume traded for a June contract on Monday morning, before the news. But other traders disagreed, saying nothing unusual had happened. Movements could be justified on the fundamentals of a rand ready for a correction. But Theobald is sticking to his guns. "There is circumstantial evidence supporting the view that contracts on huge volumes were opened before the Gordhan news broke." He referred to a Bloomberg screen grab at 8am on Monday. "Whoever traded there got in at the bottom before a lot of action occurred at 10.30am, when the news broke," he said. Traders at Kaon Capital have sifted through vast volumes of data generat...
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