14 April 2016 — Thursday
YESTERDAY in GOLD, SILVER, PLATINUM and PALLADIUM
The gold price began to head lower shortly after 8 a.m. HKT, with the low tick of the day coming just before 1 p.m. BST in London. It rallied until the equity markets opened in New York—and then it got turned lower from there. Every subsequent rally attempt got turned aside, even in the thinly-traded after hour market.
The high and low ticks in gold yesterday were recorded as $1,258.70 and $1,241.40 in the June contract.
Gold was closed at $1,242.40 spot, down $13.30 from Tuesday’s close. Net volume wasn’t exactly light at a hair over 140,500 contracts.
Here’s the 5-minute gold tick chart courtesy of Brad Robertson. The sell-off in morning trading in the Far East occurred on exceedingly light volume—and there wasn’t a noticeable pick up until 11 p.m. Denver time on their Tuesday evening on the chart below. That’s when the first sell-off of consequence happened, which was 1 a.m. in New York—and 1 p.m. in Hong Kong on their respective Wednesday’s. As usual, most of the volume that mattered was during the COMEX trading session—and after that, it died off until the not-for-profit seller showed up in after-hours trading. The vertical gray line is midnight in New York, noon the following day in Hong Kong—and don’t forget to 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 chopped mostly lower until around the noon silver fix in London. At that juncture it began to rally—and got capped [then driven back to $16 per ounce], just like gold did, starting a minute or so before the open of the equity markets in New York. It rallied to its high of the day a minute or so after 1 p.m. EDT–and the price got capped again at that point. Silver also got sold down a bit in after-hours trading, just like in gold.
The low and high ticks of the day were reported by the CME Group as $16.015 and $16.345 in the May contract.
Silver finished the Wednesday session at $16.205 spot, up a whole 2 cents on the day. Net volume in silver was way up there once again at just over 49,000 contracts.
Here’s the New York Spot Silver [Bid] chart so you can see how violent the HFT-initiated sell-off in silver was at 9:30 a.m. in New York. It went so deep, so fast, that the 24-hour Kitco chart above didn’t catch all of the move, but it’s as clear as day when you look at the New York chart on its own.
Platinum didn’t do much from a price perspective until around 1 p.m. HKT on their Wednesday afternoon. It began to sell off at that point, with the low tick of the day coming shortly before 2 p.m. Zurich time. Then it followed the same price path as silver and gold, getting capped at the New York equity market open yesterday—and then again at 1 p.m. EDT as it broke above the $1,000 spot price mark, which was Tuesday’s closing price. Nothing free market about this, either. Platinum finished the Wednesday session at $999 spot, down a buck on the day.
Palladium chopped around a few dollars either side of unchanged until minutes after noon Zurich time—and then the selling began, with the price bouncing off its $536 low a few times during the COMEX trading session. And once those attempts to drive the price lower failed, the price recovered a bit into the close, but still finished down 2 dollars on the day at $543 spot.
The dollar index closed late on Tuesday afternoon at 94.05—and continued to rally once trading began early on Tuesday evening in New York. It managed to rally for almost the entire Wednesday session, but did soften a bit in the last few hours. The dollar index finished the day at 94.79—up 74 basis points from its Tuesday close—and just off its high tick of the day.
This dollar index rally, although rising from an oversold situation, has all the hallmarks of a ramp job. As I mentioned in yesterday’s missive, we’d find out pretty quick how this was going to shake out, either up or down—and what I didn’t know at the time I wrote that, was that the ‘gentle hands’ rally was just starting. Here’s the 6-month U.S. dollar index chart so you can see for yourself.
The gold stocks opened down about 2 percent—and then rallied to their highs shortly after 10 a.m. in New York. They rolled over for good staring shortly after 11 a.m. EDT—and closed just off their low ticks of the day. The HUI finished down 2.99 percent.
The silver equities also opened lower, but quickly rallied into positive territory, with their collective highs coming shortly after 11 a.m. in New York—but by 11:40 a.m. had given ups some of those gains. The equities traded sideways until 3 p.m., before sliding into the red, as the metal itself got sold off a bit in after-hours trading. Nick Laird’s Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed down a tiny 0.14 percent.
The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that 860 gold and zero silver contracts were posted for delivery within the COMEX-approved depositories on Friday. The only short/issuer worth mentioning was HSBC USA with 850 contracts out of its own account. The three largest long/stoppers were JPMorgan, with 241 contracts for its own account and 210 contracts for its clients. Canada’s Scotiabank was in #2 spot with 217 contracts stopped—and in third place was International F.C. Stone with 128 contracts for its client account. ABN Amro was an ‘also ran’ with 56 contracts for its clients. The link to yesterday’s Issuers and Stoppers is here.
The CME Preliminary Report for the Wednesday trading session showed that gold open interest dropped by 41 contracts, leaving 3,200 contracts still open. There were 45 contracts posted for delivery today. Silver o.i. for April increased to 68 contracts, up 2 contracts from Tuesday’s report.
There was another withdrawal from GLD yesterday. This time an authorized participant removed a chunky 162,459 troy ounces. There was a big withdrawal from SLV as well, as an a.p. [read JPMorgan] took out 1,902,896 troy ounces.
Without doubt, unit holders were converting their paper shares into metal—and shipping if off to parts unknown. It’s hard to know if it was done to avoid SEC reporting requirements, or for other reasons. But based on the price action this week, both ETFs are still owed metal.
The current high-water mark in GLD was 26,484,116 troy ounces back on March 24. And despite the price advances since that date, the amount of gold in GLD is now down to 26,045,030 troy ounces. In SLV, the physical high-water mark was set on April 8—and the withdrawal mentioned above is the first movement since then.
I got an e-mail from the folks over at Switzerland’s Zürcher Kantonalbank at 3:40 a.m. EDT this morning, which was 9:40 a.m. over there. They updated their gold and silver ETFs as of the close of business on Friday, April 8—and this is what they had to report. Their gold ETF added a smallish 1,479 troy ounces—and their silver ETF declined by 24,628 troy ounces.
There was another sales report from the U.S. Mint yesterday. They sold another 15,000 gold eagles, plus another 3,500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes, plus another 51,500 silver eagles. Gold eagle/buffalo sales for April are already far in excess of what was sold in the entire month of March. Somebody wants physical gold—and it’s apparent that neither form nor price matter at the moment. That doesn’t sound like it’s JPMorgan at the trough, but you just never know.
There was some gold movement over at the COMEX-approved depositories on Tuesday. They reported receiving 4,000.000 troy ounces—which was 400-ten ounce bars into Brink’s, Inc.—and 11,316.800 troy ounces/352 kilobars were shipped out. With the exception of two kilobars shipped out of Manfra, Tordella & Brookes, Inc.—the other 350 came out of Canada’s Scotiabank. The link to that activity is here.
There was certainly decent activity in silver, as 602,811 troy ounces were received—and another 490,173 troy ounces were shipped out. Except for about 100,000 troy ounces shipped out of CNT, virtually all the rest of the in/out movement involved Brink’s, Inc.—and the link to that activity is here.
There was big ‘in’ movement over at the COMEX-approved gold kilobar depositories in Hong Kong on their Tuesday. There were 16,657 kilobars reported received—and only 262 were shipped out. All of the action was at Brink’s, Inc. as per usual—and the link to that, in troy ounces, is here.
Here are two more charts courtesy of Nick Laird. The the withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange for the month of March was 183.242 tonnes. The first chart shows the current withdrawals for Q1 against all the first quarter withdrawals going back to 2008. The second chart shows the cumulative monthly withdrawals going back the same length of time, updated with the March 2016 data.
I don’t have all that many stories for you today—and I hope there will be the odd one in here that you think is worth reading.
CRITICAL READS
Bernanke’s New Helicopter Money Plan: Sheer Destructive Lunacy — David Stockman
If you don’t think the current central bank driven economic and financial bubble is going to end badly, recall a crucial historical fact. To wit, the worldwide race of central banks to the zero bound and NIRP and their $10 trillion bond-buying spree during the last seven years was the brain child of Ben S. Bernanke.
He’s the one who falsely insisted that Great Depression 2.0 was just around the corner in September 2008. Along with Goldman’s plenipotentiary at the US Treasury, Hank Paulson, it was Bernanke who stampeded the entirety of Washington into tossing out the window the whole rule book of sound money, fiscal rectitude and free market discipline.
In fact, there was no extraordinary crisis. The Lehman failure essentially triggered a self-contained leverage and liquidity bust in the canyons of Wall Street, and it would have burned out there had the Fed allowed money market interest rates to do their work. That is, to rise sufficiently to force into liquidation the gambling houses like Lehman, Goldman and Morgan Stanley that had loaded their balance sheets with trillions of illiquid or long-duration assets and funded them with cheap overnight money.
There would have been no significant spillover effect. The notions that the financial system was imploding into a black hole and that ATMs would have gone dark and money market funds failed are complete urban legends. They were concocted by Wall Street to panic Washington into massive intervention to save their stocks and partnership shares.
This rather brief commentary, for David that is, put in an appearance on his Internet site yesterday sometime—and I thank Len Bridger for today’s first story. It’s certainly worth reading—and another link to this article is here.
JPMorgan profit falls 8 per cent, fails key regulatory test
JPMorgan Chase said Wednesday that its first-quarter profit fell more than 8 per cent from a year earlier and the bank tried to soothe investor concerns after it failed a key regulatory test designed to prevent another financial crisis.
First-quarter profit at JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank by assets, was hurt by weak results at its investment-banking division and by loans to oil and gas companies that are now struggling to make payments because of low energy prices.
As JPMorgan was announcing its quarterly results Wednesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve announced that it, as well as four other banks, failed to meet a regulatory requirement put in place after the financial crisis. They were required to come up with a plan, known as “living will,” to unwind their operations in the event of a bankruptcy or other upheaval in a way that would avoid triggering another broad financial meltdown.
Regulators called the banks’ plans “not credible” and gave them until Oct. 1 to come up with new plans or face more stringent requirements.
This AP story from late yesterday afternoon EDT, was picked up by the ca.finance.yahoo.com Internet site—and it’s certainly worth skimming. Roy Stephens, who sent me this story, was disappointed that they didn’t mention their “gold and silver aces“. When they do cash in their silver and gold chips, their accountants may find ways of burying that as well. Another link to this news item is here.
U.S. Retail Sales Tumble Into Recession Territory Driven By Auto Sales Plunge
After stumbling sideways around unchanged MoM for 3 months, U.S. retail sales tumbled 0.3% in March (considerably worse than the 0.1% MoM gain expected) confirming BofA’s credit card data as we warned. March’s print is practically the weakest month since Feb 2015 and is unlikely to get much better given the dismally weak start to April, as we noted here. After 3 months of low-base bounce in YoY retail sales, March saw it collapse back to just 1.7% YoY – deep in recession territory.
As Auto Sales collapse 2.1% MoM…which should not surprise since U.S. Auto Sales (SAAR), via WARD’s Automative Group, tumbled 3.5% YoY to end March – the biggest YoY plunge since July 2009 (pre-Cash-for-Clunkers)…and perhaps just as problematic, Restaurants tumbled 0.8% – where all the hiring has been.
And if you are hopeful about April, Johnson-Redbook reported a 2.8% plunge in Same-Store-Sales – the worst start to an April since 2005.
This 6-chart Zero Hedge article appeared on their website at 8:40 a.m. yesterday morning EDT—and it’s the first offering of the day from Richard Saler. Another link to this news item is here.
Hot on the Lot: Leasing a Used Car — The Wall Street Journal
Aspiring Lexus owners may have a hard time refusing Brendan Harrington’s latest offer: Get a lightly used version of one of the hottest luxury SUVs in America for as little as $370 a month.
The terms—offered by Mr. Harrington’s Longo Lexus dealership near Los Angeles—come as part of a lease deal on a three-year-old RX 350 with 35,700 miles on the odometer. Spanning 36 months and 45,000 miles of use, the lease requires little money up front and is potentially hundreds of dollars less than a comparatively equipped new model sold at similar terms.
Inventories of used cars in good condition are soaring in the U.S., and finance companies and dealers are scrambling to offer leases as a way to make payments affordable for people who don’t qualify for cheap deals on new cars or those looking to save cash.
New-car sales gained steam in recent years, creating a glut of used vehicles. Those inventories are problematic for auto makers hoping to maintain a record sales pace on fresh sheet metal and remain profitable in the process.
This interesting and particularly well written WSJ story popped up in the clear when I clicked on the link in yesterday’s edition of the King Report. Another link to this article is here.
Peabody, World’s Largest Coal Producer Files Bankruptcy; 8,300 Jobs in Jeopardy
One month ago we were quite amused by what at that time was one of the most ridiculous short squeezes we have ever seen when the stock of Peabody Energy, exploded higher from $2 to about $6 in days on…nothing.
Many scratched their heads at this move as nothing fundamentally had changed in the company’s deteriorating operations, and its bonds are among the most distressed issues trading currently. The move was even more bizarre when just a few days later Peabody warned it may file for bankruptcy protection imminently.
And earlier today, it did just that, when in a historic event, one which is perhaps the low-light of the sad demise of the US coal industry, U.S. coal giant Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal producer, which employs 8,300 workers, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, the most powerful convulsion yet in an industry that’s enduring the worst slump in decades. The stock has finally responded accordingly.
This story was posted on the Zero Hedge website at 9:16 a.m. EDT on Wednesday morning—and it’s the second contribution of the day from Richard Saler. Another link to this news item is here.
“Systemically important,” derivatives hustler CME Group gets account at the Fed
CME Group Inc. said on Tuesday it has received notice from the Federal Reserve that it is authorized to open an account at the U.S. central bank, allowing it to better safeguard cash deposited by its traders.
Deposits in the account will be limited to clearing member proprietary margins, CME said in an advisory to its members. CME is working with the Chicago Fed to open the account and will let members know how much interest it will pay on balances “as we get closer to an account opening date.”
CME, which operates one of the world’s biggest derivatives clearinghouses and several exchanges including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, applied for access to Fed services in 2014, after its clearinghouse was designated a “systemically important” financial institution as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act.
Can’t have these crooked institutions and/or their clients going down the drain if the commercial banking sector fails all around them, now can we, dear reader??? With the Fed backing the CME’s trades, their will be no further talk of a COMEX failure in the precious metals. This Reuters news item, filed from San Francisco, showed up on their website at 7:16 p.m. EDT on Monday evening—and I found it embedded in a GATA release. Another link to this story is here.
Panama police raid headquarters of Mossack Fonseca law firm
Panama police late on Tuesday raided the offices of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the “Panama Papers” scandal, to search for any evidence of illegal activities, authorities said in a statement.
The law firm was the origin of the “Panama Papers” leaks that have embarrassed several world leaders and shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of offshore companies.
The national police in an earlier statement said they were searching for documentation that “would establish the possible use of the firm for illicit activities”. The firm has been accused of tax evasion and fraud.
Police offers and patrol cars began gathering around the company’s building in the afternoon under the command of prosecutor Javier Caravallo, who specialises in organised crime and money laundering.
This news story was posted on the france24.com Internet site late on Tuesday, but was updated yesterday. I thank Roy Stephens for finding it for us—and another link to this story is here.
Sprott Physical Silver Trust Announces Completion of its Follow-on Offering
Sprott Physical Silver Trust (the “Trust”), a trust created to invest and hold substantially all of its assets in physical silver bullion and managed by Sprott Asset Management LP (the “Manager”), today announced that it has completed its follow-on offering of 12,300,000 units of the Trust (the “Initial Units”) at US$6.09 per Unit for gross proceeds of US$74,907,000 (the “Offering”). In addition, the underwriters for the Offering have elected to purchase an additional 1,845,000 Units of the Trust in full exercise of their over-allotment option (the “Overallotment Units” and together with the Initial Units, the “Units”). The Overallotment Units are to be delivered on April 18, 2016. Including the Overallotment Units, the gross proceeds for the Offering are approximately US$86,143,050, consisting of 14,145,000 Units offered at US$6.09 per Unit.
The Trust will use the net proceeds of the Offering to acquire physical silver bullion in accordance with the Trust’s objective and subject to the Trust’s investment and operating restrictions described in the prospectus related to the Offering. As of April 13, 2016, the Trust has contracted to purchase a total of approximately 4.470 million troy ounces of physical silver bullion. Once the Trust has taken delivery of all the silver bullion, it will publish the serial numbers of all bars held by the Trust on its website. The net proceeds of the Offering per Unit were greater than 100% of the most recently calculated net asset value per Unit of the Trust prior to, or upon determination of, pricing of the Offering, as required under the trust agreement governing the Trust.
Absolutely no surprises here, as I knew the over-allotment would be scooped up in a heartbeat. And I’m sure that they’ve already locking in the silver they’ve purchased with that over-allotment money as well. This short news item arrived in my in-box at 4:24 p.m. EDT yesterday afternoon—and it’s definitely worth reading. Another link to this article is here.
Deutsche Bank to settle U.S. silver price-fixing litigation
Deutsche Bank AG has agreed to settle U.S. litigation over allegations it illegally conspired with Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC Holdings Plc to fix silver prices at the expense of investors, a court filing on Wednesday showed.
Investors accused Deutsche Bank, HSBC and ScotiaBank of abusing their power as three of the world’s largest silver bullion banks to dictate the price of silver through a secret, once-a-day meeting known as the Silver Fix.
According to the lawsuit, the defendants distorted prices on the roughly $30 billion of silver and silver financial instruments traded annually, violating U.S. antitrust law.
Terms were not disclosed, but the accord will include a monetary payment by the German bank, a letter filed in Manhattan federal court by lawyers for the investors said.
Deutsche Bank has signed a binding settlement term sheet, and is negotiating a formal settlement agreement to be submitted for approval by U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni, who oversees the litigation.
No surprises here, either. One wonders when the other two banks will get charged with the same thing? This Reuters article appeared on their Internet site at 7:09 p.m. EDT on Wednesday—and I thank Dr. Dave Janda for bringing it to our attention. It’s a must read—and another link to this news item is here.
In India broadcast, GATA secretary slams central bank gold rigging and ETFs
The video of the Chris Powell interview Tuesday with The Times of India‘s television network, ET Now, has been posted, wherein Powell asserted that there is no telling where the gold price will go without first ascertaining the policies and surreptitious intervention of the primary participants in the gold market, central banks—and that gold exchange-traded funds are mechanisms of price suppression operated by big investment banks operating on the instructions of central banks.
The video is 5 1/2 minutes long and was posted on the economictimes.indiatimes.com Internet site on Tuesday at 11:10 a.m. IST. It’s worth watching if you have the time.
China’s yuan gold benchmark to launch with 18 members
Top Chinese banks and gold miners, along with the world’s biggest jewellery retailer, will be among 18 members taking part in Beijing’s new yuan-denominated gold benchmark, a source familiar with the matter said.
Two foreign banks will also join the benchmark-setting process, when it launches on April 19, marking China’s biggest step to become a price-setter for gold.
As the world’s top producer, importer and consumer of gold, China has baulked at having to depend on a dollar price in international transactions, and believes its market weight should entitle it to set the price of gold.
A yuan gold fix is not expected to pose an immediate threat to the gold pricing dominance of London and New York, but it could ultimately give Asia more power, particularly if the Chinese currency becomes fully convertible.
This Reuters article, filed from Singapore, appeared on their Internet site at 12:47 a.m. EDT on Wednesday—and it’s something I found on the gata.org Internet site. Another link to this story is here. Reuters had another story on this issue from about seven hours earlier than the previous story—and it has somewhat different information in it. It’s headlined “China’s big four banks, StanChart, ANZ to join yuan gold benchmark“—and I found this on the gata.org Internet site yesterday as well.
Will the SGE gold benchmark fix the fix — Lawrie Williams
Will the new Chinese gold price benchmarking system, reported to be going live April 19th after some delays, fix the gold fix – or just be another fix in the worst sense of the word? It has the potential to do either or both and, we suspect, in its earlier stages at least, attempt to do the former.
Will this change the gold market – probably not in any significant way initially, but it may well lead to a system which gradually drags price initiation away from the COMEX paper gold market, which can only be positive for the gold sector. However, as we have noted before, the vast majority of the SGE benchmarking members are Chinese, and thus effectively state-controlled, which could make market manipulation to an agenda which suits the Chinese government, whatever that may be, a distinct worry as far as the international financial community is concerned. For example, with China currently seen to be building its gold reserves it may suit the Chinese to hold prices back while it is so doing, but once it has achieved its reserve objective it might then suit it to see prices rise – perhaps sharply. To those who believe the LBMA gold price is something of a fix already then this could be out of the frying pan into the fire. But then governments are always totally honest with their announcements and data aren’t they?! So no worries there then!
This commentary by Lawrie showed up on the Sharps Pixley website yesterday sometime—and it’s worth reading. Another link to this article is here.
Tocqueville Gold Strategy Investor Letter: First Quarter 2016 — John Hathaway
We believe that the stage is set for powerful new advance in gold prices. The extreme monetary policies responsible for boosting financial-asset prices in recent years seem to be running out of steam. There seems to be growing evidence that investor confidence in these policies is fading. Policymakers appear to be grasping at straws such as digital cash, negative nominal rates, and the elimination of large-denomination cash notes. In his just-published book, The New Case For Gold (Penguin, April 2016), James Rickards identifies 13 policy shifts by the Fed since the first round of QE. It seems clear to us that this continuing reinvention of policy is a never-ending experiment; and there appears to be no clear path for reversal or policy normalization.
We believe that a decline in financial-market asset values is all that is needed to destroy whatever fragile confidence remains in paper currency and present-day financial conventions. Such a decline could come about for many reasons and at any time due to the buildup of systemic risk. Ray Dalio, iconic founder of Bridgewater Associates, has stated, “…most people should have roughly 10 percent of their assets in gold, not only as a good long-term investment, but also for its effectiveness in diversifying the other 90 percent of assets people hold.” It would not take a reallocation of 10 percent, or even 1 percent, to send the dollar gold price to all-time highs, in our opinion. Only 0.1 percent, requiring 5600 tonnes, would do the trick, as it would represent a demand increment that would swamp the supply of physical gold.
We continue to recommend exposure to physical gold and gold mining stocks, which would be the prime beneficiary of a renewed advance in precious-metals prices. Despite their substantial rally in the most recent quarter, we believe that gold mining equities remain severely undervalued long-term options on the potential increase in the gold price that we foresee.
This must read commentary by John appeared on the tocqueville.com Internet site yesterday—and I found it all by myself, because I check their website every day without fail. Another link to this quarterly report is here.
The PHOTOS and the FUNNIES
This first photo is of a hyacinth macaw—and second is a stick insect of some kind.
The WRAP
Although the gold price was initially sold lower because of ongoing rally in the dollar index, it was obvious that gold would have performed much better than it did, because JPMorgan et al had to step in at the 9:30 open of the equity markets in New York, because the gold price would have run higher if allowed to do so—despite U.S. dollar index rally. Once the price was capped, there was no chance it was ever going to be allowed to rally after that.
And what happened in gold, also happened in the other three precious metals at the same time, so ‘da boyz’ continue their iron grip on prices for the moment.
I’m very impressed to see silver perform this well—and one can only hope for more of this to come. But if the powers-that-be wish it, they can pound the crap out of this precious metal at any time of their choosing.
Here are the 6-month charts for all four precious metals—and their respective 50-day moving averages continue to trend higher.
I’m certainly not willing to handicap tomorrow’s Commitment of Traders Report. Both Ted and I are hoping that JPMorgan used the last three trading days to cover some of their remaining short positions in silver in the COMEX futures market. But the possibility exists that they actually added to those positions—not only in silver, but in gold and platinum as well, so until we see the numbers, I’m not about to stick my neck out as to where short-term prices may or may not, be headed.
I mentioned in yesterday’s column that the IMF meeting starts momentarily—and it remains to be seen what is decided there. But if anything is discussed that would be negative to the equity and bond markets, I doubt very much that they will be mentioning it for public consumption. All we can do is wait this out, just like we do everything else.
And as I type this paragraph, the London open is less than ten minutes away—and I see that the gold price didn’t do much until around 8 a.m. HKT on their Thursday morning—and then the HFT boyz carved eleven or twelve bucks off the price in just over an hour. It has recovered some of its losses since, but is still down 8 dollars at the moment. Silver’s price path was very similar—and it’s currently down 12 cents the ounce. Ditto for platinum and palladium, as the former is down 8 bucks—and the latter by 5.
Net HFT gold volume is sitting at 36,000 contracts, which is pretty chunky—and a lot of it had to do with that twelve dollar engineered price decline in the thinly-traded Far East market. Net HFT silver volume is a hair under 9,000 contracts—and roll-over volume is already decent. The dollar index has been crawling higher all night long—and is currently up 24 basis points as London opens.
And as I post today’s column on the website at 4:03 a.m. EDT, I see that the gold price popped a few bucks starting around 8:40 a.m. BST—and is only down a bit over 2 dollars at the moment. Silver got smacked at the London open, but has recovered a bit—and is currently down 14 cents the ounce. Platinum and palladium got smoked a bit as well, but both have recovered as well, with platinum currently down 9 only dollars—but palladium is only down a buck at the present time.
Net HFT volume in gold is now up to 47,200 contracts, which is quite a bit—and that number in silver is a very chunky 12,600 contracts. I’d sure love to know what’s going on ‘under the hood’ with these volume levels. The dollar index continues to move higher—and is currently up 30 basis points.
It beats the heck out of me as to how the remainder of the Thursday session will turn out. I’ll just take another one of those blue pills when I get up tomorrow morning—and try not to be surprised by whatever numbers greet me.
That’s all I have for today—and I’ll see you here tomorrow.
Ed
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