CME lowers margins for gold and silver futures contracts

New York (May 7)  CME lowers bond margins for gold, silver, platinum, and more

Trading on margin is extremely popular, this is when you effectively put down a deposit to multiply the value of your trades. This means you never fully need to put down the full notional value of a gold futures contract to trade it. CME has overnight changes these margins to make it easier to trade gold, silver and platinum futures on the exchange. There have not been too many details released but the margin for gold is down 10% and silver margins have dropped down 9.2%. For gold, there have been around 85 changes across the futures curve (different futures dates) and around 88 for silver. 

On the intraday chart below you can see that the price was moving higher well before the news hit the wires. When the official release did take place by the time the major publications caught wind of the story it gave gold futures a second wind to push higher. This morning the momentum has continued and $1820/oz has been breached. One thing that is clear from the volume histogram is the fact that the average volume in the European session is higher than usual. 

Reuters