Commodity market The price of gold bullion fell dramatically on 12 April 2013 and analysts frantically sought explanations. Rumors spread that the European Central Bank (ECB) would force Cyprus to sell its gold reserves in response to its financial crisis. Major banks such as Goldman Sachs began immediately to short gold bullion. Investors scrambled to liquidate their exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and margin call selling accelerated. George Gero, precious metals commodities expert at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Wealth Management section reported that he had not seen selling of gold bullion as panicked as this in his forty years in commodity markets.
Commodity pool Commodity pool A commodity pool is an investment structure where many individual investors combine their moneys and trade in futures contracts as a single entity in order to gain leverage. They are analogous to mutual funds wherein a fund is similarly set up expressly for trading in equity, except that mutual funds are open to public subscription whereas commodity pools and hedge funds are private. Commodity pools are also called "managed futures funds". The name "commodity pool" is a National Futures Association (NFA) legal term. In the United States, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the NFA, as opposed