The Paper Blizzard - "Derivatives"

Forward and futures markets were not, of course, an invention of the 1980s. What was an invention of the 1980s was the massive increase in paper trading instruments. These instruments, which became known as "derivatives", were first developed in the currency and debt markets. They then spread into the equity markets and into the Gold market.
The advantage of "derivatives" in the paper markets was twofold. First, they provided more and more leverage for more and more aggressive trading. Second, and far more important, they provided a method to hugely expand the amount of money in circulation without expanding the "money supply"! The traditional measures of money in circulation (M1, M2, M3, M...) expanded much more slowly. What did expand was the blizzard of "derivative paper" using paper money as its underlying "asset". This was one of the main reasons why "inflation" (defined as rising prices) slowed down.

The advantages of a Gold derivative market were similar. Governments learned in the 1960s and 1970s that it was impossible to meet an increased demand for Gold with physical Gold. They needed a paper substitute. Gold "derivatives" provided that substitute. With more tradeable alternatives to physical Gold, it became far easier to control the Gold price. But on top of the derivatives themselves, other specific mechanisms were developed to help control the price of Gold.

One of these methods was forward selling by Gold mining companies. This practice began with Gold's retreat from the $500 level in the wake of the 1987 crash. By the mid 1990s, Gold companies everywhere, but notably in Australia, were routinely forward selling years worth of their projected Gold production.

As the performance of Gold in the fifteen years between the market crash of 1987 and the start of the current $US Gold bull market in 2002 illustrates, these mechanisms worked very well indeed.