30 March 2016 — Wednesday
YESTERDAY in GOLD, SILVER, PLATINUM and PALLADIUM
The gold price sold off about four bucks by around 11 a.m. HKT on their Tuesday morning—and after that it didn’t do much until the London a.m. gold fix was in at 10:30 a.m. BST. It began to rally from there—and that became more spirited once COMEX trading began—and ‘da boyz’ had to step in a couple of times, as the market went ‘no ask’ on two occasions. Most of the day’s gains were in by around 2:45 p.m. in after-hours trading—and the price chopped sideways from there into the 5:00 p.m. EDT close.
The low and [revised] high tick were reported as $1,215.30 and $1,243.40 in the April contract.
Gold finished the Tuesday session in New York at $1,241.90 spot, up $20.60 on the day. [Revised] Gross volume was a whopping 401,093 contracts. [Revised] Net volume was only 20,069 contracts, split up between five future months, which made for a very illiquid market. All of this price/volume activity came on the same day as the last of the large traders had to roll out of the April gold contract—and I’ll have more to say about this in The Wrap.
Here’s the 5-minute gold tick chart courtesy of Brad Robertson and, as you can tell, there was little net volume in the Far East and early London trading, as all was quiet until shortly after 7 a.m. Denver time on this chart—and that’s when the fun began with the ‘no ask’ price spikes. The vertical gray line is midnight in New York/noon in Hong Kong—and add two hours for EDT.
The ‘click to enlarge‘ feature still doesn’t work with Internet Explorer, but a right mouse click with Google Chrome or the Firefox browsers should allow you to view this chart full-screen size.
The silver price was sold down a nickel or so by 11 a.m. HKT—and then didn’t do a lot until shortly before the 8 a.m. London open. At that point, a seller appeared, with the low tick of the day coming at the noon silver fix. The price had a pretty wild ride after that, as the bullion banks and the Managed Money traders duked it out—and the high tick came shortly after 4 p.m. EDT in the after-hours market. From there it traded sideways into the close.
The low and high ticks were recorded by the CME Group as $15.06 and $15.375 in the May contract.
Silver finished the day at $15.36 spot, up 11 cents from Monday’s close. Not surprisingly, net [revised] silver volume was pretty decent at just over 42,500 contracts, as the powers-that-be took on all comers. This was especially true when the silver market which, like the illiquid COMEX gold market, went ‘no ask’ a couple of times as well.
The platinum price chopped generally higher until about 1:30 p.m. Zurich time on Tuesday morning—and things got busier after that, culminating in the same ‘no ask’ price spike around 12:15 p.m. in New York. JPMorgan et al showed up in seconds to provide the necessary ‘liquidity’ to prevent a market-clearing event of biblical proportions. Once the price was under control, it chopped quietly higher into the close. Platinum finished the Tuesday session in New York at $968 spot, up 26 bucks. Heaven only knows how high the price would have gone if left to its own devices, but $1,000 the ounce spot price would have been left in the dust for sure.
Palladium traded flat in the Far East, before sagging a few dollars in early afternoon trading Zurich time. Then some not-for-profit HFT trader zoomed the price down to its $555 low tick about 11:20 a.m. in New York trading—and it blasted higher from there, before getting capped at the $576 spot mark shortly before 3 p.m. in after-hours trading. It traded flat into the close from that point. Palladium finished the Tuesday session at $576 spot, up 9 dollars on the day, after being down 12.
The dollar index closed late on Monday afternoon in New York at 95.97—and then quietly rallied to its 96.22 high tick, which came minutes before 8:30 a.m. in London. It gradually sold off from there until about 12:15 p.m. in New York—and I would suspect that was the time that Janet Yellen opened her mouth and doves flew out. The trap door under the dollar index opened—and the 95.09 low tick came around 3:40 p.m. EDT—and it rallied a small handful of basis points into the close. It finished the day at 95.16—down 81 basis points from Monday.
And here’s the 6-month U.S. dollar chart so you can see the the mid-term trend more clearly.
And here’s the 3-year U.S. dollar chart—and this hints at where the dollar might end up at some point—if not lower.
The gold stocks opened just above unchanged—and traded at that level until the event of 12:20 p.m. EDT occurred. It was up, up and away from there, with the high tick coming shortly before 3 p.m. EDT. They gave back a bit of their earlier gains in the last hour of trading, but the HUI finished up a very respectable 6.21 percent nonetheless.
The silver equities followed a very similar pattern—and they turned in a very decent performance as well, as Nick Laird’s Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed higher by 4.24 percent.
The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that 12 gold and 9 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Thursday. In gold, ADM issued 10 contracts, Citigroup 8—and Canada’s Scotiabank stopped all 20 of them. In silver, 5 contracts were issued by ABN AMRO, plus 4 from JPMorgan’s client account. Once again it was JPMorgan stopping all 9 contracts for its own in-house proprietary trading account. The link to yesterday’s Issuers and Stoppers Report is here.
Here, once again, is the Ted Butler quote from yesterday’s column, which is very apropos once again when considering JPMorgan and silver in the previous paragraph.
JPMorgan is certainly the largest acceptor (stopper) of silver in this month’s March COMEX futures contract, just as the bank has been in every traditional delivery period over the past year. And I’m only talking about the silver JPM has stopped in its house or proprietary trading account, not for its clients. With only a couple of days and a hundred contracts remaining open in the March delivery month, JPM has stopped 1,006 silver deliveries out of the total 1,285 contracts issued. [Plus 61 contracts from Monday. – Ed] But even that understates the real percentage of silver deliveries JPM has taken – when you net out those entities who both stopped and issued silver deliveries this month, JPM has taken around 98% of all the silver deliveries issued.
JPMorgan has been, not just the largest stopper of COMEX silver deliveries over the past year, but has been closer to having been the exclusive silver stopper, taking around 30 million oz in all. I don’t remember any one entity ever taking as much silver in COMEX deliveries as persistently as JPM has taken over the past year. On this basis alone, silver analysts everywhere should be concluding that JPMorgan has been acquiring silver; perhaps not to the extent that I conclude (close to 500 million oz over the past five years), but at least to the extent indicated in COMEX statistics. Maybe someday some will.
Finally, I haven’t mentioned it this month, but if the pattern established over the past year plays out again, I would expect that JPMorgan might move the 5 million+ oz it has taken in delivery this month into its own COMEX silver warehouse in the weeks ahead. I still maintain, based upon the data flow this month that JPMorgan (and its customer) was in position and set to stop or take delivery of 3,000 March COMEX contracts, or 15 million oz, and had to settle for a third of that amount. The only plausible explanation for why JPM didn’t press its advantage was because the physical silver market was so tight that a demand for full delivery would have set off a price conflagration to the upside. Based upon other data (mostly the COTs), JPM wasn’t quite ready to light the silver bonfire. — Silver analyst Ted Butler: 26 March 2016
The CME Preliminary Report for the Tuesday trading session showed that gold open interest in March dropped by only 7 contracts, leaving 20 still open. I was expecting all 27 contracts to disappear, as they were all posted for delivery yesterday, but obviously another 20 contracts were added to the delivery month at the last minute yesterday. Silver o.i. fell by 61 contracts, leaving 10 left, which is what yesterday’s report indicated. Minus the 9 in the previous paragraph, means there’s one lonely silver contract that has to be dealt with between now and the close of business on March 31.
There was a withdrawal from GLD yesterday, as an authorized participant took out 105,138 troy ounces. And for the second day in a row there was a deposit in SLV, as an a.p. added 618,562 troy ounces. Ted figured that the silver added on Monday was used to cover an existing short position—and I would suspect he would feel the same way about Tuesday’s deposit as well. He may or may not have something to say about this in his mid-week column later today.
The U.S. Mint updated their website twice yesterday—and added sales both times. In total they reported selling 4,500 troy ounces of gold eagles—500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes—and 842,500 silver eagles.
There wasn’t much activity in gold over at the COMEX-approved depositories on Monday. There were 440 kilobars/14,146.000 troy ounces shipped out of Canada’s Scotiabank—and that was all. I shan’t bother linking this activity.
It was very quiet in silver, as nothing was reported received—and only 63,207 troy ounces were shipped out.
There was decent activity over at the COMEX-approved gold kilobar depositories in Hong Kong on their Monday. They reported receiving 2,266 kilobars—and shipped out 405 of them. All of the action was at Brink’s, Inc. as per usual—and the link to that, in troy ounces, is here.
I don’t have all that many stories for you today, so I hope you’ll find a few that you consider worth you while.
CRITICAL READS
Yellen Says Caution in Raising Rates Is ‘Especially Warranted’
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said it is appropriate for U.S. central bankers to “proceed cautiously” in raising interest rates because the global economy presents heightened risks.
The speech to the Economic Club of New York made a strong case for running the economy hot to push away from the zero boundary for the Federal Open Market Committee’s target rate.
“I consider it appropriate for the committee to proceed cautiously in adjusting policy,” Yellen said Tuesday. “This caution is especially warranted because, with the federal funds rate so low, the FOMC’s ability to use conventional monetary policy to respond to economic disturbances is asymmetric.”
This Bloomberg article was posted on their Internet site at 10:20 a.m. Denver time yesterday morning, which was 12:20 p.m. EDT, which was the time the dollar headed south—and the precious metals headed north. It was updated about three hours later. There’s a 2:48 minute video clip embedded, but I really wouldn’t waste time watching it, or reading the story. I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention—and another link to this article is here.
Stock Market Crash: Is the Top In? — Mike Maloney
In this week’s video Mike presents several charts that indicate to me that the stock markets are severely overvalued. Be sure to watch the video to hear his analysis—and find out how much stocks have to fall to be fairly priced.
This in-depth and detailed analysis is certainly worth worth watching if you have the time. It was posted on the youtube.com Internet site yesterday—and it runs for 21:19 minutes. I thank Dan Rubock for bringing it to our attention.
$15-an-Hour Minimum Wage in California? Plan Has Some Worried
California is on the verge of making itself a guinea pig in a bold economics experiment.
By moving toward a plan to raise the statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022, the state could raise living standards for millions of workers. But it could also increase unemployment among some of the very same economically marginal workers the wage increase is intended to help.
Many economists, even some on the left, worry that a potential loss of jobs in a number of cities where wages are comparatively low could largely offset, and perhaps even more than offset, the boon of higher incomes at the bottom of the wage scale.
“Just as the benefits of this policy are likely to be greater because it covers a greater share of the work force than for past minimum wage increases, the risk of these costs is also higher,” said Ben Zipperer, an expert on the minimum wage at the liberal Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “It’s very unclear how that’s going to stack up.”
This news item appeared on The New York Times website on Monday—and I thank Richard Saler for sharing it with us. Another link to this story is here.
Brazil, like Russia, under attack by Hybrid War — Pepe Escobar
Color revolutions would never be enough; Exceptionalistan is always on the lookout for major strategic upgrades capable of ensuring perpetual Empire of Chaos hegemony.
The ideological matrix and the modus operandi of color revolutions by now are a matter of public domain. Not so much the concept of Unconventional War (U.W.).
U.W. was spelled out by the 2010 Special Forces Unconventional Warfare manual. Here’s the money quote: “The intent of US [Unconventional Warfare] U.W. efforts is to exploit a hostile power’s political, military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and sustaining resistance forces to accomplish U.S. strategic objectives… For the foreseeable future, U.S. forces will predominantly engage in irregular warfare (I.W.) operations.”
“Hostile” powers are meant not only in a military sense; any state that dares to defy any significant plank of the Washington-centric world “order” – from Sudan to Argentina – may be branded “hostile”.
That pretty much sums it up. So does the Wolfowitz Doctrine. John Perkins had it exactly right in his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man“. This longish opinion piece by Pepe put in an appearance on the Russia Today website at 10:59 a.m. Moscow time on their Monday morning, which was 2:59 a.m. in Washington—EDT plus 8 hours. It’s a must read for any serious student of the New Great Game. I thank Larry Galearis for sending it our way—and another link to this story is here.
Nigel Farage: “I’m being attacked for telling the truth“
This outrageous ‘interview’ with Nigel appeared on the BBC on Sunday—and it shows you to what depths that journalist and journalism has sunk to over at the BBC. It’s pathetic. I’m sure that it was all Nigel could do to hold himself back from punching this guy’s lights out.
“Unprofessional” does not do it justice. Watch for yourself.
This youtube.com ‘interview’ runs for 6:27 minutes—and I thank Jim Gullo for sending it our way.
Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media is Completely Fake: “We All Lie For the CIA“
With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naïve many Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes, Dr. Ulfkotte went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.
He recently made an appearance on Russia Today news to share these facts:
“I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.“
“But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia — this is a point of no return and I’m going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe.”
This Zero Hedge piece, which has a very disturbing, but not surprising 13:22 minute RT video clip embedded, showed on their website at 10:40 p.m. on Monday evening EDT—and it’s the second offering in a row from Jim Gullo. If you have the interest, the video is certainly worth watching. Another link to this ZH article is here.
Iran more red herring than black swan for oil
Iran may not turn out to be the stumbling block to an oil price recovery some feared. Free from the constraints of trade sanctions and fresh from the election of more moderates to parliament, Tehran should be in a position to increase its exports of oil rapidly. But when the leading lights of OPEC meet in Doha next month, they can afford to be more chilled out about an Iran-assisted supply glut.
April’s meeting will see producers like Saudi Arabia meet with Russia in the hope of formalising a broader deal that would end a damaging oil price war. In January, Brent crude prices fell below $30 a barrel. Although they are now above $40, most members of the cartel other than Iran back a freeze that could help them to avoid economic disaster.
But the threat from Tehran looks a red herring. Iran is keen to win back customers for its crude in Europe and Asia, but it still faces an uphill struggle to displace other suppliers unless it heavily discounts shipments. Even then the Islamic republic may still struggle to find brokers to underwrite its additional cargoes, or banks to act as intermediaries. Moody’s doesn’t expect Iran’s exports this year to exceed 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd), an increase of just 500,000 bpd on 2015. These increases should offset expected declines expected in U.S. crude output, but won’t be enough to fill the expected increase in total world demand.
This opinion piece by Andy Critchlow was posted on the Reuters website yesterday sometime—and I thank Richard Saler for finding it for us. Another link to this commentary is here.
Automakers Expanding in China May Soon Face Weakening Demand
The new $1.3 billion Cadillac factory on the outskirts of Shanghai is a shrine to modern manufacturing, the kind of facility that automakers all over the world dream of building but can seldom afford.
Hundreds of robots bend, arch and twist to assemble the body of Cadillac’s new flagship CT6. Lasers seal the car’s lightweight aluminum exterior using techniques that the carmaker, General Motors, has only just introduced in the United States. Yard-long, bright yellow robots like mechanical Alaskan huskies tow five-foot-tall carts of auto parts to the assembly line.
“It’s more along the lines of aircraft technology than traditional, spot-welded steel bodies,” said Paul Buetow, G.M.’s head of manufacturing in China, as he strode along the assembly line.
The factory is part of an aggressive expansion by automakers in China, the world’s largest market for new cars and the industry’s brightest hope for the last 15 years. But the country’s economy is now cooling, which could leave carmakers with too many factories and not enough buyers.
This New York Times article, filed from Shanghai, showed up on their Internet site on Monday sometime—and I thank Clive Sutherland for sending it along. Another link to this news item is here.
Just whom is gold really so ‘dangerous’ to?
Gold, Izabella Kaminska of the Financial Times asserts in a 12-minute video posted this month, is “our dangerous obsession,” a “frivolous” thing, a “decadent luxury,” “anti-social,” “a wastage of human potential,” a mechanism for “destabilizing society” with selfishness, used to “hoard” wealth by people who should entrust it to banks for investment in financial assets — like stocks priced at a hundred times earnings or government bonds with negative yields. You know — the sort of products sold by the primary advertisers of the Financial Times.
And yet Kaminska concludes her parody of financial journalism by declaring that “gold is most valuable to society when it becomes a currency” — as if gold isn’t already a currency and as if governments and central banks aren’t doing their damnedest to prevent the monetary metal from becoming even more of a currency competing with their own currencies.
Of course Kaminska never addresses the matter of why, if gold is so awful, central banks are trading it, in the words of the director of market operations of the Banque de France, “nearly on a daily basis“.
This commentary by Chris Powell, along with a link to the FT video clip, amongst others, appeared on the gata.org Internet site at 4:24 p.m. ICT [Indochina Time] on their Tuesday afternoon. Another link to this story is here.
India’s finance minister can’t persuade his own wife to paperize her gold jewellery
There is a conflict between two finance ministers, and it seems the official one is not winning this war.
The country’s finance minister announced a scheme to monetise the gold holdings of India’s families, but the finance minister back at home, the housewife, is having none of it.
This came through clearly at a recent meeting between economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das and representatives from the Reserve Bank of India, temple trusts, and other bodies to discuss ways to make the scheme more attractive.
“I am not even able to convince my wife to part with her jewellery, which she hardly uses,” one official reportedly said at the meeting, raising laughter. “It’s easy to convince North Block [one of the Indian government headquarters buildings in New Delhi] but very difficult to convince the finance minister at home to participate in this scheme.”
LOL!!! You gotta love this!!! Women of India unite—and tell their so-called men rulers where they can shove this gold paperization scheme! This incredible story put in an appearance on the hindustantimes.com Internet site at 9:56 a.m. IST on their Tuesday morning—and I found it in a GATA release. It’s a must read—and another link to this hilarious article is here.
China’s Gold Imports From Hong Kong Recover on Month in February
China’s imports of gold from Hong Kong increased in February from the smallest level since 2011 a month earlier.
Net purchases by the world’s largest consumer rose to 42.9 metric tons from 17.6 tons in January, according to data from the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department compiled by Bloomberg. The mainland bought 55.1 tons, including scrap, while shipments to Hong Kong were 12.2 tons. Mainland China doesn’t publish the data.
Investors in China have been buying bullion amid a declining stock market and the slowest economic growth in a generation. The benchmark stock index slumped 24 percent in the first two months of the year. The central bank has also been adding to reserves. Net imports in December were 111.3 tons, the highest in more than two years.
This gold-related Bloomberg news item showed up on their Internet site at 5:17 a.m. MDT on Tuesday morning—and it’s something I found on the Sharps Pixley website. Another link to this gold-related story is here.
Russia becomes world’s top gold buyer
The Central Bank of Russia bought 356,000 ounces of gold in February becoming the largest buyer of the precious metal among the world’s central banks, business daily Vedomosti reports, quoting the IMF data.
Last week, Russian foreign reserves increased by another $5.8 billion to $386.9 billion. The international reserves consist of foreign exchange, special drawing rights (SDR) holdings, the reserve position in the IMF and monetary gold.
In June 2015, the First Deputy Governor of the Central Bank Dmitry Tulin said the regulator intends to increase Russia’s international reserves to $500 billion within three to five years.
This brief story about Russia’s gold is not really ‘new’ news, but the embedded photos are worth the trip. This article showed up on the Russia Today Internet site at 9:23 a.m. Moscow time on their Tuesday morning, which was 1:23 p.m. in Washington—EDT plus 8 hours. It’s the second gold-related story that I found on the Sharps Pixley website last night. Another link to this RT story is here.
The PHOTOS and the FUNNIES
These are the last two photos from my Sunday outing. The first is a female downy woodpecker from about four meters, as seen from above and behind, a rare angle for a shot—and it’s a view of the bird one hardly ever sees. Those two spiky tail feathers are what these birds use to brace themselves against a tree trunk or branch [second photo is from last year] as they hammer away. The third photo was a cedar waxwing high overhead—and at least ten meters away, so the picture quality suffered a bit.
The WRAP
Sales of Silver Eagles achieved weekly sell-out levels yet again, as another one million coins were sold last week, bringing to 14 million the total number of Silver Eagles sold year to date. Sales of Gold Eagles continue relatively soft as of late, with the daily sales run rate this month 50% less than the previous month and 70% below the level of January’s sales. Since I allege that JPMorgan has been the big buyer of Silver Eagles for the past five years—and of Gold Eagles for much of the past year, the question I ask myself is not why has JPM stepped away from buying Gold Eagles, because I think I know the answer—namely, because JPM knows it will likely rig the gold price lower ahead. I ask myself instead, why haven’t they done the same thing with Silver Eagles, as they did a year ago when they stepped away from buying until prices fell? I don’t have a firm answer yet, so feel free to pass along anything you can think of.
Leaving possible explanations aside, I would point out that with the month coming to an end, more Silver Eagles have been sold relative to Gold Eagles in March than in quite some time (no, I’m not going to look it up). There aren’t many months in the 30-year history of the bullion coin program that Silver Eagles have outsold total ounces of Gold Eagles by a ratio of more than 100 to 1, as has been the case this month. My point is that on both an absolute and relative to gold basis, Silver Eagles sales are phenomenally large. On this, no one would disagree after looking at the data.
At the same time, reports from the retail dealer front indicate weak to downright putrid retail demand for silver and gold, not just currently, but for much of the past five years. Based upon recent Mint statistics, the weak demand can be seen in Gold Eagles (now that JPM has stepped aside), but it can’t be said that Silver Eagles are not being sold to the Mint’s maximum production capacity. Silver Eagles are being sold in the quantities reported by the Mint, for sure, but who the heck is buying them?
Perhaps the biggest question/disagreement raised in my allegation that JPMorgan has accumulated hundreds of millions of silver ounces has been my insistence that the bank has acquired 100 million Silver Eagles (plus as many as 50 million Canadian Maple Leafs) over the past five years. I’m going to address the most important reactions to the article I just made public soon, but I would ask those who doubt that JPM has been the big buyer of Silver Eagles, to at least try to reconcile and explain the strong actual sales against weak retail demand. More than any other single factor, it was this very curious circumstance –strong reported sales but weak retail demand – that first led me to the JPM connection. And I am not too proud to beg for alternative explanations, so please send them my way. — Silver analyst Ted Butler: 26 March 2016
It was a wild day in the precious metal market yesterday, as Yellen spoke—and that set off a chain reaction in the dollar index and in the COMEX futures market on the very day that all the large traders had to be roll or sell their April futures contracts in gold—unless they were standing for delivery of course.
Of course, not to be overlooked is the fact that all four precious metals were in rally mode before Janet opened her yap
So JPMorgan et al had to snuff out these rallies at the same time as the big traders were heading for the exit door—and I’m sure Janet’s comments didn’t go over too well in the corner suite at JPMorgan and elsewhere.
Ted mentioned that there was probably going to be some improvement in the Commercial net short positions in both silver and gold in Friday’s Commitment of Traders Report. But he also said that yesterday’s price action could have negated part or all of that improvement.
We’ll see what Friday’s COT Report brings, as the cut-off for it was at the close of COMEX trading yesterday—and hopefully a decent chunk of Tuesday’s volume will be in it.
Here are the 6-month charts for the four precious metals with their gains up to and including the 1:30 p.m. COMEX close on Tuesday. Most of them closed higher than that, but those numbers won’t show up on the stockchart.com Internet site until after the COMEX close today.
And as I type this paragraph, the London open is less than ten minutes away—and I see that the gold price got sold down until noon HKT on their Wednesday morning—and then rallied in a similar manner during their afternoon trading session. The gold price is currently down 4 bucks at the moment. Silver followed a very similar price pattern in Wednesday trading in the Far East—and is currently back at unchanged. Platinum and palladium also got sold down during morning trading in the Far East—and platinum is still down 6 bucks at the moment—and palladium is down 2 dollars.
Net HFT gold volume is just over 21,000 contracts, with most of that in the new front month, which is June. Net HFT silver volume is just over 4,200 contracts. The dollar index made it as high as the 95.22 mark by shortly after 10 a.m. HKT, but has been chopping lower since—and is currently sitting right on the 95.00 mark, down 17 basis points from its close in New York on Tuesday afternoon.
All of the rest of the traders have to roll or sell their April futures contracts by the close of COMEX trading this afternoon—and tonight will bring the First Notice Day numbers for gold—and I’ll have them for you in tomorrow’s missive.
And as I post today’s column on the website at 4:05 a.m EDT, I see that the gold price is now up a buck. Silver is up 8 cents the ounce—and platinum and palladium are up 4 and 1 dollar per ounce respectively. Net gold volume is now up to just under 27,000 contracts—and that number in silver is 6,300 contracts. The dollar index continues to slide—and is down 32 basis points—and back below 95.00.
Despite yesterday’s delightful price action in the precious metals—and their associated equities, nothing has changed from a COT perspective. Until that is resolved, we’re still at the mercy of JPMorgan et al because, as Ted said on the phone yesterday, they are totally in control of pricing—and can set them anywhere they choose. And unless they get over run by some event, or run into supply/demand issues—which is entirely possible, by the way—that’s all that should concern us going forward.
But watching precious metal prices rise into the final day of trading in the April gold contract, is something we haven’t seen in a very long time—and the remainder of the Wednesday session could prove interesting.
See you here tomorrow.
Ed
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