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Comment by gjm11 | Hacker News Reader

I have to say that my immediate interpretation of the title is: "Goldman Sachs: We've bought some oil futures".

Except that, post Volcker, banks are prohibited from proprietary trading; and also except that there exist strong mandatory separations ("Chinese walls") between investment research and the investment banking and trading parts of banks.

Assuming they bought futures, "Goldman Sachs Futures Pte Ltd" is officially located in Singapore and Volcker Rule doesn't affect companies that are doing trades outside of US or makes trade decisions outside US.

Volcker Rule does affect banks that are controlled by US banks, but if Goldman did paperwork correctly (of course they did), beside the name similarity, you won't be able to link it with US Goldman.

GS is an investment bank, not a commercial bank.

GS is actually a bank holding company; I'm not sure what your comment is actually trying to say though - does it intend to contradict some part of what I wrote?

The point is that they have an investment banking arm that is absolutely doing prop trading.

This stopped being true during the 2008 financial crisis. See https://www.marcus.com/us/en .

Ok, fine. They’re a bank holding company that includes an investment banking arm. That arm definitely does prop trading though, so my point stands.

or short sold so many futures that they need people buying enough so there is liquidity for them to get out of the contracts.

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