Charts better than tea leaves on GLD

I agree with you nobby......its the intent bit that I was really taking issue with. Sometimes the MM act proactively and sometimes after the fact in response of price movements, but my point is that on the whole they wish to simply have an orderly market and skim the spread for themselves.

Whilst I've no MM on my christmas card list, I do think they get blamed for all sorts of nonesense on the whole.

Turning my attention to the actual case of GLD right now.......I agree with you about someone mopping up the stock. If this wasnt the case, and the MM had inadvertently found themselves short of stock on the way up, I'd have expected them to bring the price back aggressively to buy some stock cheaply rather than paying as much as they are for it as they'd in effect be losing money on every share they buy.