Part One: But This Is How We’ve Always Done Things …
There is a great story floating around the web about a married couple and a ham (full story[1]). In brief, the wife is preparing a ham for dinner and in doing so, cuts approximately 1 inch off of two sides of the ham and throws them away. The husband, visibly upset, proclaims, “That’s a waste of good ham!” When asked what the rationale was, the wife didn’t know, simply stating that this was the way that her mother had done it.
Later, the wife called her mother and asked her why she cut the ends off, to which she replied, “That’s the way my mom prepared the ham.” The wife’s grandmother had passed, but her grandfather was still alive and when he was asked why his late wife cut the ends of the ham off he replied, “So the ham could fit in the baking pan.”
The tale revolves around cultural training at its heart, but the story is really something many of us can relate to and the notion of: this is how we’ve always done things. With ETFs, derivatives, futures contracts and long/short positions on bitcoin all coming into the space within the past few years, traditional financial may be in for a rude awakening when what they used to do, no longer works.
Big banks have been accused of price manipulation in the silver and gold markets for years; however, a debate exists in regard to if this manipulation is as pervasive as conspiracy theorists suggest, or if perhaps even worse (InvestingNews, 2022[2]). Between 2008 – 2016 J.P. Morgan admitted to wrongdoing and agreed to pay a $920 million penalty (Reuters, 2020[3]); one
