There are some commodities plays in which large scale investments perform almost as entirely different commodities than small scale investments.
Personally I saw this in late Feb/early Mar of last year. I had bought some physical silver bars, and during the 'flash crash' saw that the price of spot silver (COMEX 5k oz contracts I believe) had dipped to $12. But at the same time every online retail store selling 1oz silver bars was sold out, and I was able to sell any inventory I wanted for $35 an oz online.
Now ignoring weirdness in the precious metals market and COMEX manipulation conspiracy stuff, I think this was due to exogenous market conditions forcing a mass sell off in everything including silver contracts. And this big discrepancy in 'retail price' (price of a 1oz bar) vs 'bulk price' (price of a 5k oz COMEX contract/5k) not only corrected but in fact led to a pretty big silver bull run all the way up to ~$28. But more importantly the point is in reference to your post, if you were a big institutional investor with a $1B fund you probably couldn't afford to pay the premium to buy 1oz bars originally, but you also would have gotten wiped out of your COMEX position if you even had a little bit of leverage trying to get exposure to silver. On the other hand if you were a retail guy like me just buying 1oz bars online, you made a bunch of profit.
There are some commodities plays in which large scale investments perform almost as entirely different commodities than small scale investments.
Personally I saw this in late Feb/early Mar of last year. I had bought some physical silver bars, and during the 'flash crash' saw that the price of spot silver (COMEX 5k oz contracts I believe) had dipped to $12. But at the same time every online retail store selling 1oz silver bars was sold out, and I was able to sell any inventory I wanted for $35 an oz online.
Now ignoring weirdness in the precious metals market and COMEX manipulation conspiracy stuff, I think this was due to exogenous market conditions forcing a mass sell off in everything including silver contracts. And this big discrepancy in 'retail price' (price of a 1oz bar) vs 'bulk price' (price of a 5k oz COMEX contract/5k) not only corrected but in fact led to a pretty big silver bull run all the way up to ~$28. But more importantly the point is in reference to your post, if you were a big institutional investor with a $1B fund you probably couldn't afford to pay the premium to buy 1oz bars originally, but you also would have gotten wiped out of your COMEX position if you even had a little bit of leverage trying to get exposure to silver. On the other hand if you were a retail guy like me just buying 1oz bars online, you made a bunch of profit.
Hope this helps.