Excellent background if you take time to wade through it all. Basically smart ass guys in suits borrowed yen and played around to invest in commodities via complicated hedge type futures etc. where they leveraged the daylights out of things. Yeah dumb big time because with $1 leveraged to 10/20 or 30 times in commodity metals all it took was rise in YEN against US Dollar to cream them. Margin calls too care of the rest and metals took a free fall.

Not saying metals were not perhaps a bit pricy but this way over correction will sort itself out very fast.

Keep in mind that future prices for 3 months down the road mean little or nothing to Noront as they are not producing. The value of metals in the ground are calculated on average values expected up to 5 years out.