18 March 2016 — Friday
YESTERDAY in GOLD, SILVER, PLATINUM and PALLADIUM
The gold price was sold down a bit in Far East trading during their Thursday morning, with the low tick of the day coming at 11 a.m. HKT. From there it began to rally quietly. That rally got stepped on a bit shortly after London opened—and once it resumed, it got capped for good at the 10:30 a.m. GMT morning gold fix. Despite the fact that dollar index got smoked for the second day in a row—and the other three precious metals closed higher on the day, gold got quietly sold off—and then got sold down a bit more in after-hours trading.
The low and high tick were reported as $1,255.20 and $1,271.90 in the April contract.
Gold finished the Thursday session in New York at $1,257.60 spot, down $4.50 from Wednesday’s close. Net volume was heavy at just over 170,000 contracts.
Silver’s price movements followed mostly the same price pattern as gold for the first part of the Thursday session—and also got sold down a bit once the morning gold fix was done for the day in London. But at 9 a.m. EDT it began to rally with some authority—and also against considerable opposition. The price was capped for good at 10:40 a.m. in New York as it broke above the $16 spot mark—and from that point it was forced to trade sideways for the remainder of the COMEX session. Then, like gold, it got sold down a bit in the thinly traded and illiquid after-hours market.
The low and high ticks in this precious metal were reported by the CME Group as $15.565 and $16.075 in the May contract.
Silver closed in New York yesterday at $15.895 spot, up 30 cents from Wednesday. Net volume was very high at just under 73,000 contracts.
Platinum traded mostly flat until around 1 p.m. HKT—and then began to quietly chop higher, with the $992 high tick coming shortly before 11 a.m. EDT. It got sold off about ten bucks in the last hour of trading before the COMEX close, taking over half of the day’s gains with it—and then traded flat until after-hours trading was done at 5 p.m. in New York. Platinum finished the Thursday session at $983 spot, up 7 dollars from Wednesday’s close.
Palladium traded flat until Zurich opened at 9 a.m. Europe time—and then it too began to wind it’s way higher in price. But as the saw-tooth price pattern indicates, it was always under the watchful eye of the powers-that-be. When it finally made a lunge for the $600 spot mark shortly after 12:30 EDT, the price got capped immediately—and then throw into reverse, as palladium closed in New York yesterday at $591 spot, up 11 bucks on the day.
The dollar index closed late on Wednesday afternoon in New York at 95.75—and didn’t do much of anything until around 2:35 p.m. HKT, which was an hour and change before the London open. It began to head south with some real authority at that point, with the most of the decline coming by around 10:30 a.m. GMT in London, which just happened to be the London morning gold fix. It rallied back above the 95.00 mark by the COMEX open, but began to head lower from there, with the 94.65 low tick coming around 12:45 p.m. in New York. It traded pretty flat after that, closing the Thursday session at 94.77—down 98 basis points from Wednesday’s close.
Even though the dollar index dropped by more on Thursday than it did on Wednesday, the gold price closed down on the day yesterday—and up big on Wednesday. So those who believe that there’s a connection between the dollar index and gold should rethink that idea. I know that John Hathaway had a chart in his January commentary that showed there was a 31 percent correlation between the dollar and gold—and it was certainly nowhere near that number yesterday.
And here’s the 6-month U.S. dollar index chart so you can see the diminishing fortunes of the world’s reserve currency.
The gold stocks bounced around a bit in the first fifteen minutes of trading on Thursday morning in New York, but finally a sustained rally began about 9:45 a.m. EDT. The high tick was in by shortly after 11 a.m., but rolled over badly starting at 1 p.m.—and the gold shares closed down on the day—and almost on their low tick. The HUI finished the Thursday session down 1.34 percent. At their highs, the gold shares were up over 3 percent.
The silver equities followed a very similar pattern—and they gave up the ghost for good around 2:30 p.m. EDT, as Nick Laird’s Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed higher by only 1.46 percent. At their highs, the silver stocks were up over 6 percent.
The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that zero gold and 242 silver contracts were posted for delivery within the COMEX-approved depositories on Monday. The only short/issuer worth mentioning was ABN Amro with 240 contracts out of its client account. JPMorgan stopped 221 contracts for its own in-house [proprietary] trading account. Canada’s Scotiabank was an ‘also ran’ at 18 contracts.
So far in the March delivery month, there have been 971 silver contracts issued—and JPMorgan has stopped 855 of them, or 88 percent—147 for its client account—and 708 for its own account. Except for Ted Butler—and by extension, myself—none of the other so-called precious metal ‘analysts’ out there is talking about this. Why not?….is the question that should be asked of them.
The CME Preliminary Report for the Thursday trading session showed that gold open interest in March increased by 1 contract to 150 contracts still around. In silver, March o.i. declined by 38 contracts, leaving 677 still left to deliver—minus the 242 contracts mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago. And since only 4 silver contracts were posted for delivery today in Wednesday’s preliminary report, another 38-4=34 March contracts holders were let off the hook by JPMorgan.
There was another huge deposit in GLD yesterday, as an authorized participant—or more than one authorized participant—added 382,372 troy ounces. And as of 6:41 p.m. EDT yesterday evening, there were no reported changes in SLV.
It will be interesting to see if any more silver is forthcoming into this silver ETF, or will JPMorgan resort to shorting the shares in lieu of depositing real metal once again? The jury is still out on that for the moment.
Ted mentioned that there was huge volume in GLD on Wednesday, but not yesterday. In SLV it was the opposite. It was reasonably quiet volume on Wednesday, but barn-burner volume on Thursday. Based on this information, it will be interesting to see what gets deposited in these two ETFs over the next few days.
There was no sales report from the U.S. Mint yesterday.
There was no in/out activity in gold over at the COMEX-approved depositories on Wednesday.
It was much different in silver, as nothing was reported received—but a very decent 922,262 troy ounces was shipped out. Of that amount, there was 299,856 troy ounces shipped out of JPMorgan—and almost all the rest came out of CNT. The link to that is here.
It was a decent day over at the COMEX-approved gold kilobar depositories in Hong Kong on their Wednesday, as 1,510 kilobars were reported received—and 5,365 kilobars were shipped out the door for parts unknown. All of the action was at Brink’s, Inc. as per usual—and the link to that, in troy ounces, is here.
Here are three charts that Nick Laird passed around last night. They show Swiss gold imports and exports for the month of January. The first one is gross and net imports and exports by month going back a couple of years—and the last two show the imports and exports by country.
I don’t have all that many stories once again—and once again I’m kind of happy about that.
CRITICAL READS
Reality Check: Caterpillar Slashes Guidance Again, Sees Q1 EPS 30% Below Estimate
Moments ago Caterpillar, the company which as we promptly report every month, has never seen a “greater depression” surprised markets with yet another reality check when it announced early this morning that it is slashing its Q1 revenue and EPS guidance, as follows:
Caterpillar expects first quarter 2016 sales and revenues to be in a range of $9.3 to $9.4 billion. Wall Street’s estimate was for a $10.2 billion number
The EPS estimate for the first quarter 2016 is expected to be $0.50 to $0.55 per share. Excluding restructuring costs, the profit estimate for first quarter 2016 is expected to be $0.65-$0.70 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, the consensus estimate was $0.95, implying a nearly 30% cut to expectations.
What is perplexing is that even as CAT slashed Q1 guidance, the Company also said that its “remained comfortable with full year guidance for 2016 sales and revenues and profit per share.” It is unclear just how the company plans to make up for the Q1 drop in future quarters, as it is unclear if anyone else “remains comfortable” with this guidance which puts CAT’s 2016 revenue outlook of $42 billion, some $20 billion lower than the company’s 2012 revenue. At this rate the company will have to buy back more than all of its stock by 2020 to continue the illusion that all is well in a world that continues to grind through a global industrial depression.
This Zero Hedge news item appeared on their Internet site at 7:17 a.m. on Thursday morning EDT—and the chart at the top of the story is worth a quick look. Another link to this story is here.
Hamptons luxury home sales soften as Wall Street weakness takes a toll
The market for luxury homes in the Hamptons, the summer playground for Wall Street’s wealthiest, is losing some of its luster as financial markets limp along for a second year.
The average price of the 10 most expensive homes sold in this cluster of towns, villages and hamlets on Long Island’s east end was $35.5 million in 2015, 20 percent lower than the $44.6 million recorded the year before, according to real estate brokers Town & Country Real Estate in East Hampton.
That is far from calamitous given it is the second-highest average top 10 price ever and up from just $15.9 million in 2009, the year the market bottomed during the financial crisis.
But for Judi Desiderio, who has been active in Hamptons real estate for three decades and is now Town & Country’s chief executive, it is still a meaningful decline.
I feel for them, but I can’t quite reach them—if you know what I mean, dear reader. This Reuters article, filed from New York was posted on their website at 11:15 a.m. EDT on St. Patrick’s Day—and I thank Brad Robertson for sending it via Zero Hedge. Another link to this story is here.
U.S. current account trade deficit hits $484.1 billion in 2015
The deficit in the broadest measure of U.S. trade declined slightly in the final three months of 2015, but for the entire year the deficit jumped to the highest level in seven years.
The deficit in the current account narrowed to $125.3 billion in the fourth quarter, down 3.6 percent from a deficit of $129.9 billion in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
The deficit for the entire year rose to $484.1 billion, up 24.3 percent from a 2014 imbalance of $389.5 billion. It was the biggest annual deficit since 2008 when the deficit totaled $690.8 billion.
The big deterioration reflected the struggles that U.S. companies are having as weakness in major economies overseas and a stronger dollar have sharply reduced export sales.
This AP story, filed from Washington, put in an appearance on their website at 9:15 a.m. EDT yesterday morning—and I thank Scott Linn for finding it for us. Another link to this news item is here.
Boom Times for Fracking’s Toxic Wastewater Come to a Shaky End
In 2010, as fracking was taking off in Oklahoma, Jeff Andrews, a former oil rig manager and drilling consultant, had an idea for how to cash in on the boom. Rather than drill a well that would produce oil, Andrews decided to drill one that could be used to dispose of all the salty, toxic wastewater that comes up with it.
At the time, it seemed like a sure bet. For every barrel of oil produced in Oklahoma, drillers produce an average of about 10 barrels of waste water. While other states tend to treat and recycle their oil and gas waste water, Oklahoma has a long history of shooting it back down a hole in the ground—and forgetting about it.
By mid-2014, oil production in Oklahoma had jumped to 300,000 barrels a day. That summer, Andrews was injecting about 9,000 barrels of waste water down his disposal well daily—and charging about 75¢ a barrel. He and his partners were on their way to recouping the $3.2 million they’d invested in the business. But there was one rather large problem looming on the horizon: Oklahoma was fast becoming the earthquake capital of the U.S., and scientists were starting to connect waste water wells to the state’s sharp rise in seismic activity.
This very interesting Bloomberg story showed up on their Internet site at 4:00 a.m. Denver time on Thursday morning—and I thank Doug Clark for finding it for us. Another link to this news item is here.
“It’s All F**ked“: Brazil Descends Into Chaos as Rousseff, Lula Wiretaps Trigger Mass Protests
On Wednesday, we said the following about Brazil: It seems as though this country can’t get through a single day without some piece of political news or economic data creating confusion and turmoil.
We said that on the way to noting that central bank chief Alexandre Tombini looked set to resign for fear that former President Lula’s new cabinet position and attendant promise to “turn the economy around” would lead invariably to government interference in monetary and FX policy.
As regular readers and Brazil watchers alike are no doubt aware, the BRL has been on a veritable roller coaster ride of late and it’s all thanks, one way or another, to Lula. The currency rallied on his arrest, sold off when he was offered a position in Rousseff’s cabinet, and now, is headed sharply higher after a court injunction blocked his nomination as chief of staff.
The injunction appears to stem from some 50 audio recordings released to the media on Wednesday by Judge Sergio Moro, the lead prosecutor in the car wash probe. At least one of the recordings seems to suggest that Rousseff did indeed offer Lula the ministry post in order to shield him from prosecution. The most damning call was recorded on Wednesday afternoon, when Rousseff can be heard telling Lula that she is sending him his ministerial papers “in case of necessity.”
This Zero Hedge article is datelined 6:21 p.m. EDT last evening—and it has obviously been updated since it was first posted, because U.K. reader Tariq Khan sent it to me at 1:33 p.m. EDT yesterday afternoon. Another link to this story is here.
Norway Cuts Rates, Hints at NIRP, QE as Central Bank Falls (Way) Behind in FX Wars
We’ve long said the Norges Bank would ease in March in the face of falling crude prices and the continuation of the negative rates regime at the ECB, the Riksbank, and the NationalBank.
Indeed by the time of today’s announcement, the market was pricing in a ~75% chance that Oystein Olsen would cut rates by 25 bps. And he didn’t disappoint, slashing the deposit rate to 0.50%. Incidentally, we’d hate to be the 1 economist out of 20 surveyed by Bloomberg that managed to miss this one.
The picture in Norway is clouded by a number of factors.
Obviously, the economy is heavily dependent on oil, and the sharp decline in prices has taken a significant bite out of revenue. At the same time, falling crude has also put pressure on the NOK, which has naturally adjusted downward with oil, providing somewhat of a cushion for the country’s economy.
This 3-chart Zero Hedge article appeared on their Internet site at 7:01 a.m. on Thursday morning EDT—and I thank Richard Saler for sending it our way. Another link to this story is here.
The ECB and John Law– Alasdair Macleod
It is extending quantitative easing from sovereign debt into non-financial investment grade bonds, while increasing the pace of acquisition to €80bn per month. The ECB also promised to pay the banks to take credit from it in “targeted longer-term refinancing operations”.
Any Frenchman with a knowledge of his country’s history should hear alarm bells ringing. The ECB is running the Eurozone’s money and assets in a similar fashion to that of John Law’s Banque Generale Privée (renamed Banque Royale in 1719), which ran those of France in 1716-20. The scheme at its heart was simple: use the money-issuing monopoly granted to the bank by the state to drive up the value of the Mississippi Company’s shares using paper money created for the purpose. The Duc d’Orleans, regent of France for the young Louis XV, agreed to the scheme because it would provide the Bourbons with much-needed funds.
This is pretty much what the ECB is doing today, except on a far larger Eurozone-wide basis. The need for government funds is of primary importance today, as it was then.
In Law’s day, France did not have a central bank, such as the Bank of England, managing the issue of government debt, let alone a functioning government bond market. The profligate spending of Louis XIV had left the state three billion livres in debt, which was the equivalent of 1,840 tonnes of gold. This was about 85% of the world’s estimated gold stock at that time, at the livre’s conversion rate into Louis d’Or. John Law would almost double that by June 1720, with unbacked livre notes issued by his bank.
This longish essay by Alasdair put in an appearance on the goldmoney.com Internet site yesterday—and I thank Robert Jonathan Lewis for pointing it out. Another link to this commentary is here.
Is There a U.S./Russia Grand Bargain in Syria? — Pepe Escobar
It’s spy thriller stuff; no one is talking. But there are indications Russia would not announce a partial withdrawal from Syria right before the Geneva negotiations ramp up unless a grand bargain with Washington had been struck.
Some sort of bargain is in play, of which we still don’t know the details; that’s what the CIA itself is basically saying through their multiple U.S. Think Tankland mouthpieces. And that’s the real meaning hidden under a carefully timed Barack Obama interview that, although inviting suspension of disbelief, reads like a major policy change document.
Obama invests in proverbial whitewashing, now admitting U.S. intel did not specifically identify the Bashar al-Assad government as responsible for the Ghouta chemical attack. And then there are nuggets, such as Ukraine seen as not a vital interest of the U.S. – something that clashes head on with the Brzezinski doctrine. Or Saudi Arabia as freeloaders of U.S. foreign policy – something that provoked a fierce response from former Osama bin Laden pal and Saudi intel supremo Prince Turki.
Tradeoffs seem to be imminent. And that would imply a power shift has taken place above Obama — who is essentially a messenger, a paperboy. Still that does not mean that the bellicose agendas of both the Pentagon and the CIA are now contained.
This opinion piece by Pepe was posted on the sputniknews.com Internet site at 7:18 p.m. Moscow time on their Thursday evening, which was 12:18 p.m. in Washington—EDT plus 7 hours. It’s the second offering of the day from Tariq Khan. Another link to this commentary is here.
Bank of Japan Intervenes in the Market to Smash Yen After Nikkei Crashes 700 Points
Nikkei futures rallied post-Fed into the Japanese open on their Thursday morning (despite weakness in USD/JPY) and then when trade data struck (and exposed the utter failure of competitive devaluation), everything went into free-fall. The Nikkei crashed 700 points and USD/JPY plunged to its lowest since QQE2…which prompted us to summon the cartoon character at the head of the BoJ as follows…
And sure enough, just moments later right on cue “someone” started panic selling JPY, sending the USD/JPY soaring higher by over 100 pips.
So just as USD/JPY hit QQE2 lows, someone stepped in large….which juiced the NKY right back up.
As we noted literally moments ago “for now the dollar is weaker, however that is only until the ECB and BoJ intervene once again to crush their currencies“—because as a reminder while China wants a weaker dollar, both Japan and Europe want precisely the opposite—which we believe is imminent.”
This 4-chart Zero Hedge piece appeared on their Internet site at 9:15 a.m. EDT on Wednesday morning, but was obviously written much earlier. With the dollar index adjustment of the last few days, I’m sure that the ‘currency wars’ are about to reignite. Another link to this news item is here—and the charts are worth a look.
Jim Rickards on Fed Policy and Why Gold Is Winning the Money Competition
An introduction to lawyer, portfolio manager, government adviser, lecturer, and author James Rickards could easily be five pages long. Sifting through his CV, it’s easier to pick the things he doesn’t do rather than listing all the different jobs and responsibilities he holds and has held over the past decades. This is what is keeping him busy at this moment:
He is the chief global strategist at West Shore Funds, a registered investment advisor, and he edits the financial newsletter Strategic intelligence. He advises the department of defense and also lectures at Johns Hopkins University and other prestigious institutions. What he is best known for, however, are his two best-selling books about the global financial system, “Currency Wars” and “The Death of Money”.
Both books have defined and predicted important trends in financial markets that major media organizations and well-known commentators frequently overlook, or only pick up on years later.
Epoch Times spoke to Mr. Rickards about his forthcoming book “The New Case for Gold”, Federal Reserve policy, and gold.
There’s a 27:55 minute video interview with Jim, but there’s also an extensive transcript as well. However, I get the impression by the way the transcript ends, that not all of what’s said in the video interview is covered in it. It was posted on theepochtimes.com Internet site on Wednesday—and I thank Harold Jacobsen for sharing it with us. Another link to this interview is here.
De-Dollarization: The Story of Gaddafi’s Gold-Backed Currency is Not Over
A declassified email exchange between former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her adviser Sid Blumenthal shows that Clinton was up to her eyeballs in the Western conspiracy against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his Pan-African “Gold Dinar” currency, F. William Engdahl narrates.
Gaddafi called upon African nations to create a currency alliance making the gold dinar the primary means of payment for oil and other resources.
“Along with the Arab OPEC sovereign wealth funds for their oil, other African oil nations, specifically Angola and Nigeria, were moving to create their own national oil wealth funds at the time of the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya,” Engdahl writes, adding that those sovereign national funds were supposed to make Africa independent from colonial monetary control.
“The Gaddafi dream of an Arabic and African gold system independent of the dollar, unfortunately, died with him,” Engdahl notes.
The story is not finished yet: a new gold-backed currency alliance is emerging in the East, threatening again the U.S. dollar hegemony. This group, headed by China and Russia, poses an entirely new challenge to America’s monetary hegemony, the researcher remarks.
This is an extension of the story on this issue that I posted in yesterday’s column. This one showed up on the sputniknews.com Internet site at 9:39 p.m. Moscow time on their Thursday evening—and it’s the third and final contribution from U.K. reader Tariq Khan. It’s worth reading—and another link to this gold-related story is here.
Gold jewellery imports into India from ASEAN to face 12.5% countervailing duty
After steel and metals, the government has moved to protect the local gold jewellery-making industry from imports that threaten the jobs in the sector.
Gold jewellery imports from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations [ASEAN] under the free-trade agreement, which have been under the scanner for some time, will face a 12.5% countervailing duty in lieu of 12.5% excise duty imposed in the budget. The duty will make imports more expensive—and protect the local industry.
Imposition of a duty would also ensure incentive for production in the country and the Made in India initiative. Replying to a debate in the Lok Sabha on the general budget, Jaitley rejected the demand for rolling back the levy, saying the move is in preparation for implementation of the goods and services tax.
This gold-related news item, filed from New Delhi, showed up on The Economic Times of India website at 5:10 a.m. IST on their Thursday morning—and it’s something I found on the Sharps Pixley website last night. Another link to this story is here.
The PHOTOS and the FUNNIES
The first photo is of a cute-as-can-be ocelot kitten—and the second photo is one all grown up.
The WRAP
What Brandon impressed on me was that the collective mindset of today’s silver investor is very different from the collective thinking that existed before the year 2000 [when the Internet came along]. Even though I became focused on silver and its manipulation long before then, I include myself in that category. What I’ve been able to confirm or learn since the turn of the century has only convinced me more of silver’s destiny with shockingly higher prices. I may take some personal measures in the face of an extremely bearish COT market structure, but at the same time always envision even higher prices when the physical shortage hits.
What this means is that the silver investors who have grasped the whole story and which are growing in number, the collective resolution not to sell except at much higher prices has grown strong. I know that’s true in my case. My reason to hold silver is still as an investment I will sell someday at a very high price; it’s just that, because of the continuing flow of data, my intended sale price keeps getting ratcheted up. This makes me and, I think many others, much stronger silver holders. What I took from Brandon is that, aside from the baptism of fire that declining prices over the past five years that have hardened those investors who have held, the information flow has forged even stronger hands.
In other words, those holding silver today may be the strongest silver holders ever, simply because their price expectations have grown so high. And it’s not just high prices – it’s the physical shortage resolution to come. I’ll probably end up selling too soon, but it won’t be before a physical shortage mania is in full force. There’s not that much silver in the world in the form that matters (1,000 oz bars) to start with, say 1.3 billion oz worth no more than $20 billion and Brandon has persuaded me those holding it may be a lot stronger than I imagined.
Of the 1.3 billion oz of industry standard silver bullion that exists in the world, I am further convinced that JPMorgan has accumulated a third of those ounces over the past 5 years, or more than 400 million oz. I would consider JPMorgan the strongest possible silver hand of all. Between JPM and the assorted other world holders of actual silver (including what’s in the ETFs and warehouse inventories), I believe only the slightest amount may be available to the market at anywhere near current prices. Further, when higher silver prices do come, it’s even easier for me to imagine new buyers completely overwhelming old sellers and for silver to remain tight to the point of being unavailable until prices are high enough to discourage new buyers and convince holders, like myself, to say goodbye to silver forever. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about $50 or $100 silver. — Silver analyst Ted Butler: 16 March 2016
It was another day that started out with such promise, only to have the powers-that-be show up and cap the gold price at the London a.m. fix—and that was despite the fact that the U.S. dollar index fell by even more on Thursday then it did on Wednesday on the Fed news. They even had the audacity to close it down on the day. They didn’t let silver past $16—platinum before it could get a sniff of $1,000—and palladium before it could break $600 the ounce. And the fact that gold and silver volume was enormous once again, showed that ‘da boyz’ meant business.
Here are the 6-month charts for all four precious metals—and they show the updated dojis for Wednesday—and the new ones for the Thursday trading session.
As Ted pointed out yesterday, almost nothing has changed from a price perspective in either silver or gold since mid February—and whatever today’s Commitment of Traders Report shows, is already yesterday’s news, as what has happened since Tuesday’s cut-off now renders that report totally obsolete.
Ted said that unless JPMorgan et al get over run, or there’s some sort of legerdemain going on behind the scenes that’s being hidden by all this volume, these rallies are going to end up the same way as they always have—and that’s with eye-watering engineered price declines. If that ‘usual scenario’ ends up being the case, then only the timing is unknown.
So we wait.
And as I type this paragraph at 3:55 a.m. EDT, the London open is less than five minutes away—and I see that gold rallied a bit on a dollar dip in mid-morning trading in the Far East on their Friday, but now that the dollar is rallying anew, the gold price has rolled over—and the five dollar gain has mostly vanished, as gold is back to only up a dollar or so. The same can be said of silver—and it’s heading the same direction as gold, but still up 12 cents presently. Platinum and palladium had been rallying as well, but platinum is now down 3 bucks the ounce, but palladium is still up a dollar.
Net HFT gold volume is just over 32,000 contracts—and that number in silver is already well north of 10,500 contracts, which is a very ugly number for this time of day, so the rallies in both metals in morning trading in the Far East, particularly silver, didn’t go unopposed. The dollar index, which sold off a bit in mid-morning trading in Hong Kong, began to rally about 2:25 p.m. HKT—and is currently up 22 basis points.
In last Saturday’s weekly commentary, Ted Butler had a few words to say about something that was posted on the CFTC’s website on March 11—and rather than paraphrase, here are the two associated paragraphs verbatim, plus the link.
“In closing, a somewhat constructive development. A little while back, I commented on some cockamamie report issued by an industry group to the CFTC that basically found that position limits shouldn’t be considered, turning more than a century of commodity regulatory thought on its head. It was kind of like a finding that was against motherhood, apple pie, baseball and the American flag. Of course, you just knew that it was the brainchild of those affiliated with the CME (and JPM).“
“The good news was that the report was almost universally condemned by responsible elected officials. The better news is that now even the supposed initiator of the wacky and conflicted report, said to be Commissioner Giancarlo, has personally withdrawn any support. It’s always a good thing when wacky ideas are labeled as such; and too bad it happens so infrequently.”
The link to the brief statement by Commissioner Giancarlo is here.
With today being Friday, nothing will surprise when I check the charts after I roll out of bed later this morning.
Enjoy your weekend—and I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Ed
The post The Dollar Gets Crushed Again: Precious Metals Get Capped Again appeared first on Ed Steer.