"sophisticated" financial geniuses (sounds better than "white collar criminals") only play 2 games:
1) Sort and Distort, 2) Pump and Dump.
Before they attack a sector they'll write up glorious reports about how the boom will go one forever and a day to lure buyers. Then they short, once they've taken a short position they'll relentlessly write up craps and spread craps to try and help their effort to drive prices down (distort), and if they need to use Coles ads they'll do that too.
I'm convinced that before they attacked the commodities sector they shorted mining services shares and miners shares first. They then short commodities, base metals, precious metals, and then write up about how bad the down turn is, and if it persists blah blah ... so they can close out their short positions.
We saw UBS "bought" and "sold" (become sub holder, then ceased to be) within like a week. My interpretation is they closed their short positions. The dumb ones who still follow the "shorting is the way to go" lead will simply be eaten up by the "smart money".
They'll quietly go long on mining services and miners first, then they'll switch from short to long on commodities. Then they'll write up about recoveries blah blah ...
BLY Price at posting:
71.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held