15 April 2016 — Friday
YESTERDAY in GOLD, SILVER, PLATINUM and PALLADIUM
After trading flat for a couple of hours, some kind soul sold the gold price down about twelve bucks during mid-morning trading in Hong Kong. It recovered a few bucks into the London open—and then rallied back to unchanged by the 10:30 a.m. BST morning gold fix. Then at 1 p.m. BST, the not-for-profit sellers showed up again, with most of the price damage occurring by 11:45 a.m. in New York. It chopped more or less sideways from there, with the absolute low tick coming at 3:45 p.m. in after-hours trading—and it rallied four dollars into the 5:00 p.m. EDT close.
The high and low ticks were reported by the CME Group as $1,245.90 and $1,225.40 in the June contract.
Gold finished the Thursday session in New York at $1,227.60 spot, down $14.80 from Wednesday’s close. Net volume was enormous at just over 188,500 contracts.
And here’s the New York Spot Gold [Bid] chart on its own, so you can see the COMEX trading activity in more detail.
Silver followed the gold price pattern right up until the London open. At that point it got sold down about 15 cents—and back below $16 spot—but then came roaring back above unchanged, with the high tick in London coming more or less at the a.m. gold fix. Then when the sell-off began at 1 p.m. BST, just like in gold, it didn’t get far—and began to rally minutes after the COMEX open. The high tick of the day came shortly after the equity markets opened in New York—and the attempt to sell it off after that didn’t produce much in the way of results—and from the 11:00 a.m. EDT London close, the price chopped sideways for the rest of the day, with some down/up price spikes thrown in to make things more interesting.
The low and high ticks in silver were recorded as $15.925 and $16.27 in the May contract. Gross volume was 71,845 contracts, but netted out to ‘only’ 45,700 contracts—give or take. Roll-over volume was a bit less than 20 percent of gross volume.
And here’s the New York Spot Silver [Bid] chart so you can get a much closer look at the COMEX price action yesterday, because, compared to gold, it was strange beyond belief.
Platinum was forced to follow the same general price pattern as silver, right up to and including the smack-down at the Zurich/London open. From there it chopped higher, with the price getting capped at the same time as silver, shortly after the equity markets opened in New York on Thursday morning. At that point it was sold down until 1 p.m. EDT—and the price immediately rallied back a few dollars before trading more or less sideways into the 5:00 p.m. close. Platinum finished the Thursday session at $990 spot, down 9 dollars on the day.
Palladium traded like platinum, except ‘da boyz’ didn’t show up at 9:45 a.m. EDT to cap the price like they did in both silver and platinum. Once the London p.m. gold fix was done, the price stair-stepped higher into the close, finishing the day at $561 spot, up 18 bucks from Wednesday.
The dollar index closed late on Wednesday afternoon in New York at 94.79—and continued its rally once trading began at 6 p.m. EDT in evening trading. The 92.50 spike high came about 8:20 a.m. in London—and from there it got sold down to its 94.68 low around 8:40 a.m. in New York. From that point, it chopped quietly higher in a rather broad range until the close, but never broke back above the 95.00 mark, finishing the day at 94.94—up 15 basis points from Wednesday.
And here’s the 6-month U.S. dollar index chart—and it’s way too soon to read anything into the dollar index’s failure to close above the 95.00 mark.
The gold stocks opened a bit lower, but began to head south almost immediately, with their respective low ticks coming shortly before 1 p.m. in New York. From that point they rallied a decent amount until 2:30 p.m. EDT, but at that point the gold price began to edge lower, taking the shares with it. The HUI closed down 3.82 percent.
The silver equities followed an almost identical path, as Nick Laird’s Intraday Silver Sentiment Index finished the Thursday session lower to the tune of 2.97 percent.
The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that 91 gold and 48 silver contracts were posted for delivery within the COMEX-approved depositories on Monday. In gold, the two short/issuers of note were International F.C. Stone once again, this time they issued 70 contracts out of their client account—and coming in a distant second was ABN Amro with 17. JPMorgan was the biggest long/stopper once again with 26 contracts for its own account, plus 23 for its clients. In second and third place was Canada’s Scotiabank with 24 contracts—and International F.C. Stone with 13 contracts. In silver, all 48 contracts were issued by F.C. Stone out of its client account—and R.J. O’Brien stopped 45 contracts for its client account. JPMorgan was nowhere to be seen. The link to yesterday’s Issuers and Stoppers Report is here.
The CME Preliminary Report for the Thursday trading session showed that gold open interest in April dropped 893 gold contracts, leaving 2,307 contracts remaining. Since Wednesday’s Daily Delivery report showed that 860 contracts were posted for delivery today, that means that JPMorgan let another 893-860=33 contract holders off the hook in the April delivery month because they didn’t have any physical gold to deliver. Silver o.i. in April was unchanged at 68 contracts.
There was another withdrawal from GLD yesterday, as an authorized participant took out 105,120 troy ounces. And as of 8:00 a.m. EDT yesterday evening, there were no reported changes in SLV.
There was a small sales report from the U.S. Mint. They sold 3,500 troy ounces of gold eagles, plus 500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes.
There was very decent gold activity over at the COMEX-approved depositories on their Wednesday, as 160,755 troy ounces were reported received—but only 9,966.500 troy ounces/310 kilobars were shipped out. All of the ‘in’ activity was at HSBC USA—and with the exception of 10 kilobars shipped out of the Manfra, Tordella & Brookes, Inc. depository, the other 300 kilobars departed Scotiabank’s vault. The link to that activity is here.
There was no ‘in’ activity at all in silver, but 600,000.000 troy ounces were shipped out of JPMogan’s vault. An awfully round number to be sure, but I remember this amount of silver going into their vault many moons ago—and I mentioned the strange amount at that time as well. The link to that activity is here.
Over at the COMEX-approved gold kilobar depositories in Hong Kong on their Wednesday, they reported receiving 924 of them—and shipped out 3,205. All of the action was at the Brink’s, Inc. depository—and the link to that, in troy ounces, is here.
Here’s another chart that Nick passed around on Wednesday that I didn’t have room for in yesterday’s column, so here it is now. The chart title says it all—and as you can tell from the lower of the two charts, Chindia demand is taking up almost all of Planet Earth’s yearly gold mining production.
I have the usual number of stories for a weekday column but, as always, the final edit is up to you.
CRITICAL READS
More Bull: David Stockman
The robo-machines were raging yesterday based on precisely nothing except banging 2080 on the S&P cash and a teapot’s worth of short-term trading momentum. But a 1% or $300 billion gain in the stock market apparently needs some fig leaf of rationalization. So the lazy hacks who cover the casino’s daily hijinks for the mainstream media came up with some doozies.
To wit, JPMorgan purportedly had a bang up quarter and surprised to the upside and China’s export machine came roaring back. This was supposedly some kind of all clear signal. According to the bulls, the market can’t rise without “participation” by the financials and China is still the mainspring of global growth.
I won’t bother to say, not exactly. You could have learned by the second paragraph that “up” was actually “down”.
In fact, JPMorgan’s earnings were down 7% from last year, and were nearly $1 billion or 15% below its bookings for the March quarter three years ago (2013). Whatever they implied, JPM’s Q1 profits had nothing to do with a break-out to the upside.
That was reinforced by its revenue postings. They came in 3.5% below prior year, and that was no aberration. It seems as if JPMs revenues have been drooping ever since the Feds gifted it with Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns back in 2008. LTM revenues of $92.7 billion are now 10% below the $103 billion it posted back in 2010.
This longish commentary by David put in an appearance on his Internet site yesterday sometime—and I must admit that I haven’t had the time to read it yet. I thank Roy Stephens for sending it our way. Another link to this item is here.
“Let them sell their summer homes“: NYC pension dumps hedge funds
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-pensions-idUSKCN0XB1TE?feedType=nl&feedName=usdai&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=US%20Daily%20Investor%20Update%202016-04-14&utm_term=US%20Daily%20Investor%20Update
New York City’s largest public pension is exiting all hedge fund investments in the latest sign that the $4 trillion public pension sector is losing patience with these often secretive portfolios at a time of poor performance and high fees.
The board of the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS) voted to leave blue chip firms such as Brevan Howard and D.E. Shaw after their consultants said they can reach their targeted investment returns with less risky funds.
The move by the fund, which had $51.2 billion in assets as of Jan. 31, follows a similar actions by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), the nation’s largest public fund, and public pensions in Illinois.
“Hedges have underperformed, costing us millions,” New York City’s Public Advocate Letitia James told board members in prepared remarks. “Let them sell their summer homes and jets, and return those fees to their investors.”
Wow! This ain’t good news for the hedge fund industry. This Reuters story, filed from New York, appeared on their Internet site at 7:05 p.m. EDT on Thursday evening—and I thank Richard Saler for his first contribution of the day. Another link to this article is here.
Regulators Warn 5 Top Banks They Are Still Too Big to Fail
The nation’s top bank regulators have added an unexpected voice to the growing chorus of critics worried that the biggest American banks, nearly eight years after the financial crisis, are still too big to fail.
The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said on Wednesday that five of the nation’s eight largest banks — including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America — did not have “credible” plans for how they would wind themselves down in a crisis without sowing panic.
That suggests that if there were another crisis today, the government would need to prop up the largest banks if it wanted to avoid financial chaos.
The announcement coincides with a presidential campaign that at times has been dominated by a debate over what danger the big banks still pose to the nation’s economic security. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has called for the biggest banks to be broken up, a stand that his opponent, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, has criticized.
This worthwhile article showed up on The New York Times website on Wednesday sometime—and it’s the second contribution of the day from Roy Stephens. Another link to this story is here.
With plenty of punch, central bankers wait in vain for the world to drink
Central bankers usually worry about when to remove the punch bowl of cheap finance but when they gather in Washington, D.C. this week they will face a different problem: how to force the world to drink.
Amid a flood of cheap money and a historic experiment with negative interest rates, households, corporations and banks in the developed world have turned their backs on borrowing. Credit growth has flat-lined and an array of metrics indicate the world has become a more cautious place, potentially upending whatever bang for the buck central banks might expect.
In the U.S. households are paying down mortgages instead of borrowing against homes to fund consumption, altering behavior that arguably helped fuel the 2007 financial crisis but that also contributed to economic growth. A Chicago Federal Reserve Bank composite index of household, bank and corporate leverage has been below average for nearly four years.
European and U.S. companies are socking away cash and the Bank of Japan’s descent into negative rates has yet to boost consumption, corporate investment, or even faith in an economic rebound.
This Reuters article, co-filed from Washington and Frankfurt, showed up on their Internet site at 12:59 p.m. EDT yesterday afternoon—and it’s something I ‘borrowed’ from this morning’s edition of the King Report. Another link to this story is here.
Greenspan: “Monetary policy has done everything it can“
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that monetary policy has reached the outward bounds of its effectiveness without another round of quantitative easing.
“Monetary policy … has done everything it can unless you want to put additional QEs on. They’re not helping that much in the sense that ultimately determines whether or not you’re getting an effect from the QEs” beyond increasing price-to-earnings ratios in the stock market, he said during an interview on CNBC‘s “Squawk Alley.”
“There’s no real evidence that we’re getting an impact on lending and on the economy picking up,” he said.
Greenspan said he disagreed with International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde that negative interest rates create a net positive impact. Lagarde offered the assessment earlier on “Squawk on the Street.”
There are three video clips totally about 14 minutes in all that feature Alan—and there’s a rather brief transcript as well. It appeared on the cnbc.com Internet site about 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday morning—and it’s the second story in a row that I found in today’s edition of the King Report. Another link to it is here.
Top quotes from Putin’s 2016 Q&A
From Turkish reluctance to fight jihadist militants to ‘saving’ Poroshenko or Erdogan, President Vladimir Putin’s annual Q&A session was anything but a dull affair. Over three million people wanted to ask the Russian leader questions.
The Russian president categorically denied that Russia is “encircled by enemies,” saying it would be impossible for such a thing to happen. Putin pointed out that Russia maintains good relations with the vast majority of countries around the globe.
The Russian leader said the crisis in Ukraine was “manmade,” while it was obvious it was “an instrument to change power” in the country. The president added that little had changed with “oligarchs still remaining in power.” Citing rising costs faced by the general public, Putin mentioned that “they did not think about the people.”
Twelve-year-old Varya Kuznetsova posed President Putin a rather challenging question, asking: “Who would you rescue first if they were drowning, Erdogan or Poroshenko?” Putin opted not to pick a ‘favorite,’ but in a barb to both the Turkish and the Ukrainian leaders said, “If someone is determined to drown, you can’t save them, but we are willing to extend a hand to anyone, as long as they want that.”
Can you image any other world leader pulling this off? This very interesting news item was posted on the Russia Today website at 5:27 p.m. Moscow time on their Thursday afternoon, which was 9:27 a.m. in Washington—EDT plus 8 hours. I thank reader ‘aurora’ for passing it around early yesterday afternoon EDT. Another link to this story is here.
Gold’s $33 billion man: Don’t be a doubter; keep buying
Gold’s first-quarter rally was staggering: It was the best quarter for gold in 30 years. The State Street Global Advisors’ $33 billion SPDR Gold Trust took in $7 billion, more than outweighing all it lost in shareholder redemptions in 2014 and 2015. The gold ETF is up 15 percent year-to-date.
So what’s next for the wise investor? After another few days of risk-on equities’ rallying, and the worst day for gold in three weeks on Thursday, is it time to take profits in gold? Or follow Warren Buffett’s advice, repeated in various forms over the years, to steer clear of the precious metal?
George Milling-Stanley, head of the gold strategy team at State Street Global Advisors, thinks the first quarter move into gold was not hot money and is sustainable.
“We think most people were dangerously underweight gold or out of the market altogether,” Milling-Stanley said in a recent interview with CNBC, conducted at the end of the first quarter’s unprecedented gold run.
There’s a 5:04 minute video clip embedded, plus a transcript. This gold-related news item put in an appearance on their Internet site around 8 a.m. EDT on Thursday morning—and it’s the first of two items that I picked up from the Sharps Pixley website. Another link to this story is here.
Deutsche Bank Confirms Silver Market Manipulation in Legal Settlement, Agrees to Expose Other Banks
Back in July of 2014, we reported that in an attempt to obtain if not compensation, then at least confirmation of bank manipulation in the precious metals industry, a group of silver bullion banks including Deutsche Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC (later UBS was also added to the defendants) were accused of manipulating prices in the multi-billion dollar market.
The lawsuit, which was originally filed in a New York district court by veteran litigator J. Scott Nicholson, a resident of Washington D.C., alleged that the banks, which oversee the century-old silver fix manipulated the physical and COMEX futures market since January 2007. The lawsuit subsequently received class-action status. It was the first case to target the silver fix.
Many expected that this case would never go anywhere and that the defendant banks would stonewall indefinitely: after all their legal budgets were far greater than the plaintiffs.
Which is why we were surprised to read overnight that not only has this lawsuit against precious metals manipulation not been swept away, but that the lead defendant, troubled German bank Deutsche Bank agreed to settle the litigation over allegations it illegally conspired with Bank of Nova Scotia and HSBC Holdings Plc to fix silver prices at the expense of investors, Reuters reported citing a court filing by law firm Lowey.
This story was all over the Internet yesterday—and was the headline to my column in the wee hours of yesterday morning. This is the Zero Hedge spin on it—and it has been obviously been updated several times during the day, as this version bears a 5:19 p.m. EDT time stamp—and Richard Saler sent it to me about six hour before that. Another link to it is here.
Deutsche Bank Admits It Rigged Gold Prices, Agrees to Expose Other Manipulators
Well, that didn’t take long.
Earlier today when we reported the stunning news that DB has decided to “turn” against the precious metals manipulation cartel by first settling a long-running silver price fixing lawsuit which in addition to “valuable monetary consideration” said it would expose the other banks’ rigging having also “agreed to provide cooperation to plaintiffs, including the production of instant messages, and other electronic communications, as part of the settlement” we said “since this is just one of many lawsuits filed over the past two years in Manhattan federal court in which investors accused banks of conspiring to rig rates or prices in financial and commodities markets, we expect that now that DB has “turned” that much more curious information about precious metals rigging will emerge, and will confirm what the “bugs” had said all along: that the precious metals market has been rigged all along.”
This was confirmed moments ago when Reuters reported that Deutsche Bank has also reached a settlement in US litigation alleging the bank conspired to fix gold prices. In other words, hours after admitting it was rigging the silver market, it did the same for gold.
This Zero Hedge story appeared on their website at 12:48 p.m. on Thursday afternoon EDT—and towards the end, contains almost all the information that appears in the story on silver posted above it. So once you’re read the pertinent bits on gold, you don’t need to read the rest. I thank David Caron for sending this our way—and another link to this story is here. I’ll have more about this in The Wrap.
Mike Ballanger: Deutsche Bank silver settlement — GATA vindicated
Deutsche Bank’s confession to manipulating the gold and silver markets with other banks is vindication for GATA and repudiation for the organization’s critics, Toronto broker and metals market analyst Michael Ballanger writes today.
While of course GATA is delighted with the development, Deutsche Bank’s confession is even more a vindication for silver market analyst Ted Butler, who was exposing silver market manipulation long before GATA got into the business. GATA won’t be able to claim full vindication until central banks and governments echo Deutsche Bank’s confession in regard to the monetary metals and mainstream financial news organizations feel compelled to report what has been only obvious for many years.
Besides, mere claiming vindication won’t actually bestow it. While the aphorism mistakenly attributed to Gandhi has often been cited as encouragement to GATA — “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win” — our victory more likely will resemble Alfred E. Neuman’s adaptation of the aphorism: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then they go back to ignoring you, explaining that everybody really knew all along what you were trying to tell them and that the joke is still on you.”
This commentary appeared on the 24hgold.com Internet site, but I haven’t had the chance to read it because their Internet site is down at the moment. I would think that it’s a must read—and I thank Chris Powell for providing the above preamble in a GATA release he filed from Singapore on their Friday afternoon. Another link to this story is here.
The gold market just got some great news from India
For nearly six weeks, the global gold market has been missing its largest buyer. With gold purchases across the nation of India being paralyzed by a strike from national jewellers’ associations.
But yesterday, local reports suggest that a return may now be at hand.
India’s papers reported that many gold sellers reopened their doors on Monday. With as many as half of jewellery stores now back in action across the country.
This gold-related news item showed up on the oilprice.com Internet site on Wednesday evening EDT—and was subsequently picked up by the businessinsider.com Internet site. It was originally headlined “India Resumes Gold Imports“—and I thank Richard Saler for sharing it with us. Another link to this story is here.
India’s gold imports drop 16% in Full Year 2015-16: Report
India`s gold imports in 2015/16 fiscal year, ended on March 31, dropped 16 percent from a year ago to 926 tonnes, news agency NewsRise Financial reported on Wednesday, as higher prices and jewellers’ strike curbed demand in the previous quarter.
The world`s second biggest consumer imports in March slumped to 18 tonnes from 125 tonnes in the previous year, the agency said quoting provisional data provided by a finance ministry official.
Indian jewellers went on an indefinite strike from March to protest the reintroduction of excise duty on gold jewellery after four years. The strike and higher prices are believed to have cut India`s demand for gold in March quarter by about two-thirds from a year ago to its lowest in seven years.
The above three paragraphs are all there is to this brief news item that was filed from Mumbai on Wednesday afternoon at 15:52 IST. It showed up on zeenews.india.com Internet site—and I found it over a Sharps Pixley yesterday sometime.
Gold Demand Jumps in Japan as Sub-Zero Rates Spur Call for Haven
Gold sales surged in Japan through March after the country’s move to set negative interest rates sent investors scurrying for a shelter, a further sign that global central bank policy of keeping borrowing costs low or below zero is stoking demand for bullion.
Bar sales climbed by 35 percent to 8,192 kilograms in the three months ended March 31 from a year earlier, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K., the country’s biggest bullion retailer, said in a statement Thursday.
Monetary authorities responsible for about two dozen countries have dropped policy rates below zero to try to revive economies. In a bid to stimulate lending, the Bank of Japan in January joined the European Central Bank in setting sub-zero rates, along with Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. Low or negative rates raise the appeal of bullion as it’s not an interest-bearing asset.
The Europeans are also buying gold as a haven because of negative rates, Andrea Lang, director of marketing and sales at the Austrian Mint, said in an interview in Singapore at the start of this month.
This story, which is certainly worth reading, was posted on the Bloomberg Internet site at 12:44 a.m. Denver time on Thursday—just after midnight—and I thank Richard Saler for his third and final offering in today’s column. Another link to this must read story is here.
Gold resurgence: who’s buying gold and why
After four years of sharp falls, a sudden revival has been taking place in the gold market.
In the first three months of 2016 the price of the yellow metal soared by 20pc – its best quarterly performance since the financial crisis erupted in the final three months of 2008.
The gold price, currently around $1,260 an ounce, is well below its record peak of almost $1,900 achieved in July 2011, at the height of the European sovereign debt crisis.
For investors who have missed out on the rally so far, the big question is: has gold turned a corner, suggesting that it will continue to rise, or will it crash back down to earth?
This gold-related news story showed up on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site at 8:01 a.m. BST on their Wednesday morning—and I found the link to it on Mark O’Byrne’s goldcore.com website yesterday. It’s worth reading—and another link to this article is here.
The PHOTOS and the FUNNIES
Of all the reef-dwellers that I enjoy the most, the cuttlefish and the squid top the list. They are the kaleidoscopes of the sea, changing their colours and patterns at the speed of light. The colour in this photo is perfectly natural—and in the blink of an eye they can transform themselves with a totally different colour/pattern. I never tire of watching them—and if you’re careful, you can get within a few feet of them. It’s an amazing show at that range. The second photo is Steller’s jay—obviously taken at point blank range on someone’s patio. We have lots of them in this province, but you have to be in, or much closer to the mountains that we are here in Edmonton, to see one.
The WRAP
“The end of democracy will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.” — Thomas Jefferson
It was another day of big volume in both gold and silver–and another day where silver bucked the price trend. I must admit that I’m watching the day-to-day price action with great fascination, not knowing what it all means. There’s no question that the Managed Money were sellers in gold yesterday, as JPMorgan et al engineered the price lower—and gold was closed below its 50-day moving average, albeit marginally.
But that doesn’t explain the lack of similar price action in silver. Yes, it hit a new intraday low on Thursday, but no moving averages of importance were broken, so it’s a reasonable assumption that the Managed Money traders were sitting on their hands for the most part.
The COT Report from the previous two weeks has shown a very decent improvement in silver’s Commercial net short position, but that may have all gone out the window with the rallies in both metals during the reporting week that ended at the close of COMEX trading on Tuesday. As I said yesterday, it’s what’s going on under the hood that is the unknown—and hopefully today’s report will shine some light on that.
The big question that will be answered is what the ‘Big 4’ traders in silver [JPMorgan] did during the report week. Did they cover more short positions during that period, or did they have to step in and add to their short positions for the umpteenth time to prevent silver from running away to the upside?
Here are the 6-month charts for all four precious metals—and it’s impossible to know what to read into them.
I received an e-mail out of the blue yesterday afternoon from a ‘household name’ in the North American gold world that’s know by all. He passed along the Zero Hedge spin on the Deutsche Bank silver/gold price-fixing story—and in our exchange of e-mails he had this to say—“A lead attorney for the plaintiffs tells me they will go after the remaining defendants on discovery (as opposed to negotiating a settlement) assuming the motion to dismiss is denied, which seems highly likely. JP Morgan is not a defendant yet, but I think the discovery phase with HSBC, Scotia, Barclays et al, will shed light on JPM’s misdeeds. It looks to me that the inquiry could widen significantly.”
We can only hope—and so we wait some more.
Ted was encouraged by the news, but said unless the investigation focuses on JPMorgan and the CME/COMEX, nothing may come of it. But, having said that, there’s no question that the noose is tightening—and the price fixing scheme is now fully in the public domain at last. They are only steps away from Ground Zero now.
And as I type this paragraph, the London open is less than ten minutes away—and I see that gold was sold down about 5 bucks in less than an hour, starting at 8 a.m. HKT on their Friday morning. From there, it worked its way higher—and as of this writing, it’s up 3 dollars on the day. The price pattern was more or less the same in silver—and it’s currently up 4 cents the ounce. Platinum followed the same price pattern as gold and silver, but was not allowed to rise above unchanged—and is down a buck at the moment. Palladium got sold down a dollar or so as well—and it’s subsequent rally ran out of gas/got capped shortly before 11 a.m. HKT—and is only up a dollar.
Net HFT gold volume is just over 25,500 contracts, which isn’t much compared to the volume this time on Thursday. and that number in silver is 4,650 contracts—and about half of what it was this time yesterday. The dollar index poked its nose above the 95.00 mark between 8 and 9 a.m. in Hong Kong on their Friday morning, but has slid a bit since then—and is back to unchanged as London opens.
Today, at 3:30 p.m. EDT we get the latest and greatest Commitment of Traders Report—and it will certainly tell us a lot—and I’ll have all the details, good or bad, in my Saturday column.
Today is the start of the IMF meeting in Washington—and it runs through until sometime on Sunday. I must admit that I’m not sure what will happen, if anything, but the world’s central bankers are, as I’ve said on countless occasions over the years, all out of aces—and the gold card is the only one left in the deck.
And as I post today’s column on the website at 4:03 a.m. EDT, I see that gold price hasn’t done a thing since the London open, nor in the four hours preceding the open—and it’s up about 3 bucks at the moment. The same can be said of silver—and it’s up 3 cents the ounce. Platinum got sold off a bit at the Zurich open, but has rallied back—and is only down a couple of dollars at the moment. Palladium is now up only a buck.
Net HFT gold volume is a bit over 31,500 contracts—and that number in silver is around 5,700 contracts. The dollar index attempted to break above the 95.00 mark right at the 8:00 a.m. London open, but that got turned aside—and the index is down 2 basis points.
That’s all I have for today—and since it’s a Friday, with an IMF meeting thrown in for good measure, I shan’t offer any predictions about how precious metal trading activity will unfold for the remainder of the day.
Enjoy your weekend, or what’s left of it if you live just west of the International Date Line—and I’ll see you here on Saturday.
Ed
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