19 April 2016 — Tuesday
YESTERDAY in GOLD, SILVER, PLATINUM an PALLADIUM
The gold price made a couple of attempts to rally after trading began at 6:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday evening. Neither attempt was allowed to get far—and the price was back to unchanged shortly before 10 a.m. HKT on their Monday morning. There was a sharp up/down rally fifteen minutes either side of the London open—and gold began to rally anew around 8:30 a.m. BST. The high tick of the day came about 9:20 a.m. EDT—and ‘da boyz’ and their algos had the price back to a hair below unchanged by the London p.m. gold fix. It chopped quietly lower for the rest of the day from that point onward, with the low tick coming a minute or so after 12:30 a.m. in New York.
The high and lows reported by the CME Group as $1,243.30 and $1,231.70 in the June contract.
Gold finished the Monday session in New York at $1,232.50 spot, down $1.60 from Friday. Net volume was very respectable at just over 134,000 contracts.
Here’s the 5-minute gold tick chart courtesy of Brad Robertson—and you can see that the big volume spikes of the day came either side of the London open—1 a.m. MDT—and then again between the COMEX open [6:20 a.m. Denver time on this chart] and the London p.m. gold fix. Once COMEX trading was done, volume dropped to background levels once again. 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.
Silver’s price path was the same at the outset, but then charted a somewhat different course as the Monday trading session unfolded. After the two initial rallies got squashed, the price was still under pressure, with the low tick coming at the London open. The choppy rally from there ended around 11:45 a.m. in New York trading—and then traded unevenly lower into the close.
The low and high in this precious metal was recorded as $16.13 and $16.34 in the May contract.
Silver was closed in New York yesterday at $162.0 spot, down 2.5 cents on the day. Net volume was nothing special at a hair over 32,500 contracts.
Platinum also rallied a bit staring at 6 p.m. in New York on Sunday evening, but that state of affairs wasn’t allowed to last, either. It was sold down until about 2 p.m. HKT on their Monday afternoon—and at that point it rallied into the COMEX open. At that juncture, JPMorgan worked their magic—and the $969 low tick was printed shortly after the London p.m. gold fix. It chopped higher by noon EDT—and then didn’t do a lot after that. Platinum finished the Monday session at $978 spot, down 6 dollars from it’s Friday close.
Palladium was also sold lower once trading started in New York on Sunday evening. The low tick came around 11:30 a.m. in Zurich—and the price chopped higher from there until around 11:30 a.m. in New York. It didn’t do much until some kind soul peeled a few bucks off the price in the dying minutes of the after-hours trading session. Palladium closed lower by 4 bucks the ounces, at $564 spot.
The dollar index close late on Friday afternoon in New York at 94.70—and dropped a bit more than 10 basis points shortly after trading began at 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday afternoon . It chopped quietly higher—and hit its 94.83 high tick around 2:40 p.m. HKT on their Monday afternoon. It headed lower from there in very choppy fashion—and it appeared that the usual ‘gentle hands’ appeared at precisely 1:00 p.m. EDT. From there it rallied a bit into the close. The dollar index finished the Monday session at 94.46—down 24 basis points from Friday, which is the same amount it lost on Friday. Here’s the 3-day chart so you can see the Sunday action, plus Friday’s as well.
Here’s the 6-month dollar index chart—and it’s still to soon to call the rally off its last Tuesday low, over, as of yet.
The gold stocks opened up a bit—and then dropped a bit over 2 percent to their lows, which came at, or minutes after, the London p.m. gold fix. They then rallied to their highs, which came around 11:35 a.m. in New York—and then sold off a bit from there. However, they did manage a positive close, as the HUI finished up 0.45 percent on the day.
The silver equities followed a very similar pattern to their golden brethren, although they closed higher by a very respectable 1.36 percent.
The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that 28 gold and zero silver contracts were posted for delivery within the COMEX-approved depositories on Wednesday. As has been the case lately, International F.C. Stone was the sole issuer—and JPMorgan was the biggest long stopper, with 9 contracts for itself—and 8 for its clients. And Canada’s Scotiabank was in third place again with 7 contracts. The link to yesterday’s Issuers and Stoppers Report is here.
The CME Preliminary Report for the Monday trading session showed that gold open interest in April fell by 227 contracts, laving 1,971 still around. Since only 35 gold contracts were posted for delivery today in Friday’s Daily Delivery Report, that means that JPMorgan allowed another 227-35=192 short/issuers off the hook—and for the same reason they’ve done all month in gold, and that’s because the short holders had no physical gold backing their positions. Silver o.i. in April declined by 18 contracts leaving 6 still open. 18 silver contracts were issued for delivery today in Friday’s report, so all the short/issuers had metal to deliver.
There were no reported changes in GLD—and as of 8:48 p.m. EDT yesterday evening, there were no reported changes in SLV, either.
And as I was about to post today’s column on the website in the wee hours of this morning Denver time, I received an e-mail from the folks over at Switzerland’s Zürcher Kantonalbank with the updated figures for their gold and silver ETFs as of the close of business on Friday, April 15—and here’s what they had to report. They added 4,560 troy ounces of gold—and 166,797 troy ounces of silver.
There was a very decent sales report from the U.S. Mint on Monday. They sold another 13,000 troy ounces of gold eagles—2,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes—and 676,500 silver eagles.
With gold eagles and gold buffalo sales miles ahead of March sales, it’s Ted Butler’s opinion that, like in silver eagles, JPMorgan is back buying every gold coin that the mint can produce—and that they’re not selling to John Q. Public.
There was very little activity in gold over at the COMEX-approved depositories on Friday. They didn’t receive anything—and only 2 kilobars were shipped out of the Manfra, Tordella & Brookes, Inc. depository.
There was nothing reported received in silver, either—but 653,507 troy ounces were shipped out the door. Of that amount, another 600,000 troy ounces left the JPMorgan depository. That’s the second ‘out’ shipment from JPMorgan of that size in the last week. The link to that action is here.
There was some activity over at the COMEX-approved gold kilobar depositories in Hong Kong on Friday, as 300 kilobars were received—and 1,353 were reported shipped out. All of the activity was at Brink’s, Inc. as per usual—and the link to that, in troy ounces, is here.
I have a the usual number of stories for you today and, as usual, I leave the final edit up to you.
CRITICAL READS
Institutionalized Lying: Why Central Bankers Never See Bubbles — David Stockman
Every day there is more confirmation that the casino is an exceedingly dangerous place and that exposure to the stock, bond and related markets is to be avoided at all hazards. In essence the whole shebang is based on institutionalized lying, meaning that pronouncements of central bankers, Wall Street brokers and big company executives are a tissue of misdirection, obfuscation and outright deceit.
And they are self-reinforcing, too. Since the former are busy “accommodating”, massaging and “stimulating” economies all around the world—bad things like recessions and stock market busts just can’t happen.
S&P 500 earnings on a GAAP basis came in at $86.47 for the LTM period just ended, and the current quarter is already conceded to be down by upwards of 10%.
In fact, the stock market is now valued at 24.2X—in the nosebleed section of history—-at a time when the global growth cycle is reversing, the U.S. business expansion at 82 months is long in the tooth and actual GAAP earnings that you don’t go to jail for reporting are down 18.5% from the September 2014 LTM peak, and heading lower.
Inside that yawning gap lies the pattern and practice of institutionalized lying. And to start the week we had another batch of whoppers.
This longish commentary by David put in an appearance on his Internet site yesterday—and it’s definitely worth reading. I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us—and another link to this article is here.
Goldman Sachs Said to Seek Deep Cost Cuts
Goldman Sachs is said to be embarking on its biggest cost-cutting push in years as it tries to weather a slump in trade and deal making. Bloomberg‘s Yvonne Man reports on “Asia Edge.”
I’m not surprised, as the IPO market is dead. This 1:49 video clip was posted on the bloomberg.com Internet site last Thursday evening—and I found it in Monday’s edition of the King Report.
The bad smell hovering over the global economy
All is calm. All is still. Share prices are going up. Oil prices are rising. China has stabilised. The eurozone is over the worst. After a panicky start to 2016, investors have decided that things aren’t so bad after all.
Put your ear to the ground though, and it is possible to hear the blades whirring. Far away, preparations are being made for helicopter drops of money onto the global economy. With due honour to one of Humphrey Bogart’s many great lines from Casablanca: “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.”
But isn’t it true that action by Beijing has boosted activity in China, helping to push oil prices back above $40 a barrel? Has Mario Draghi not announced a fresh stimulus package from the European Central Bank designed to remove the threat of deflation? Are hundreds of thousands of jobs not being created in the U.S. each month?
In each case, the answer is yes. China’s economy appears to have bottomed out. Fears of a $20 oil price have receded. Prices have stopped falling in the eurozone. Employment growth has continued in the U.S. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting growth in the global economy of just over 3% this year – nothing spectacular, but not a disaster either.
This commentary showed up on theguardian.com Internet site at 12:00 p.m. BST on their Sunday afternoon, which was 7:00 a.m. in Washington—EDT plus 5 hours. I thank Australian subscriber J.W. for bringing it to our attention—and it’s worth your while as well. Another link to this story is here.
Marc Faber: “Messiah” Central Banks Helicopter Money Printing “Will Not End Well”
Marc Faber has warned that a new financial crisis is coming and will be worse than the 2008 one and told Bloomberg TV that the “messiah” central banks “helicopter money ” policies “will not end well.”
Faber warns that ultimately “you cannot grow an economy by just throwing money at people” and that “QE for the people” will be like “throwing gasoline on a fire.”
Faber is entertaining, has a good chuckle at the central banks and IMF’s monetary policies and laughs at the idiocy of the IMF’s recent counter-factual statement when Lagarde said the world economy would be worse off without negative interest rates:
“…they will always say, if we hadn’t done this and hadn’t done that, it would be much worse. They have no proof for this assertion. In my view, it would have been better to let the crisis, already the first one in 2000, run its course and prevent the colossal credit bubble that was built up that then led to an even bigger crisis, and now they’re doing the same mistake.”
This commentary/interview appeared on the goldcore.com Internet site on Monday sometime—and it’s worth your while if you have the time. Another link to this this article is here.
Pensions are a bubble waiting to burst
The United States is not a “bubble economy”. That’s the official view of the Federal Reserve expressed by Chair Janet Yellen earlier this month. Yellen describes a bubble as a combination of “clearly overvalued” asset prices, strong credit growth and rising leverage. In other words, the type of financial fragility the central bank, with its vast research staff, failed to spot prior to the subprime crisis.
The Fed’s definition of a bubble is too narrow. Bubbles are, in essence, illusions of wealth. The last two great bubbles – internet stocks and U.S. real estate – involved inflated asset prices. The great current bubble is centered around liabilities, or promises to make future cash payments. The owners of these claims consider them part of their current wealth. But what if they cannot be paid?
These thoughts are provoked by a gloomy note on pensions by Andy Lees of the independent research outfit MacroStrategy Partnership. Lees is worried that the assumptions involved in calculating pensions are as flawed as the valuations prevalent during the dot-com bubble.
The present value of a pension is arrived at by discounting future cash payments. As interest rates have fallen, this discount rate has declined, increasing pension liabilities. As a result, many pensions find their liabilities exceed assets. In pensions-speak, they are “underfunded”.
This opinion piece by Reuters correspondent Edward Chancellor was posted on their website last Friday—and I thank Richard Saler for sharing it with us. Another link to this commentary is here.
Vote to Impeach Rousseff Prompted Cheers, but Won’t End Turmoil in Brazil
To those unfamiliar with the cacophonous tenor of Brazilian politics, the legislative session on Sunday night that approved the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff could have been mistaken for a soccer match.
As the outcome of the vote became clear, deputies in the lower house of Congress hooted, pumped their fists and hoisted onto their shoulders the man who had cast the pivotal vote.
One lawmaker, wearing a flag as a cape, fired off a gun that shot confetti.
The unrestrained merriment was mirrored on the streets of cities across Brazil, where thousands of people celebrated what they hope will be the ouster of Ms. Rousseff on charges that she illegally used money from state-owned banks to hide a catastrophic budget deficit and bolster her chances of re-election.
This news item, filed from Brasília, appeared on The New York Times website yesterday evening EDT—and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it our way. Another link to this story is here.
Angela Merkel is now silencing German satirists to please Erdogan: This is what the E.U. has wrought — Boris Johnson
Love is a many splendoured thing. Cupid’s darts find the most unexpected targets. I am not for one minute prepared to exclude the possibility that erotic interest may flower between a man and a goat. The ancient Greeks clearly thought about the possibility: hence their mythologising about Pan and satyrs and other cloven-footed hybrids.
A cursory trawl of the internet reveals – according to the BBC – that in 2006 a Sudanese man called Tombe was surprised in the act of darkness with a female goat, and was obliged by the village elders to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars to its owner, and then to marry the beast. To the best of my knowledge they are still together.
But I don’t think there is anyone of any importance who seriously believes that there has been any kind of romance involving the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and any other non-human mammal, caprine or otherwise.
So, when a young German comedian called the Turkish leader a “goat –––––––”, in a little-watched broadcast on March 31, you might have thought that the best response – from Turkey’s point of view – was a dignified silence. Yes, I suppose it was puerile. And yes, I accept that it was not in especially good taste. But it was what we call a joke. It is utterly bewildering – and slightly shocking – that the Turkish leader has failed to see this.
You couldn’t make this stuff up! The Lord Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has a go at this story, which is preposterous beyond belief. It was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site at 11:09 p.m. BST on their Sunday evening, which was 6:09 p.m. EDT in Washington. It’s another contribution from Roy Stephens. Whatever this is, news story or otherwise—another link to it is here.
Ukrainian Coup ‘Interim Step for Toppling Putin‘ – Former CIA Analyst
Now that Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has resigned, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern speaks with Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear to discuss who’s in line to be the U.S.-approved replacement.
“It was the most bizarre experience, because never before had I seen a coup advertised in advance,” McGovern tells Loud & Clear, referring to the U.S.-orchestrated Maidan protests in Kiev that led to the government of President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.
“We had the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland telling [U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey] Pyatt on an…unencrypted telephone conversation, ‘Look, we got this thing wired. We got this thing glued, and we’re midwifing this thing and Yats is the guy.’”
From the ridiculous to the bizarre. This short commentary/interview by ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern is a must read for any serious student of the New Great Game. I showed up on the sputniknews.com Internet site early last week—and I thank Larry Galearis for finding it for us. Another link to this short interview is here.
Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill
Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.
This very interesting New York Times article put in an appearance on their Internet site on Friday sometime—and it arrived in my in-box via Patricia Caulfield about three hours after I’d posted my Saturday column. Another link to this news item is here.
No royal commission as Turnbull’s Liberals in deep with Australia’s banks
If you believe the conservative line, Australia’s banks are not only too big to fail, but also too fragile to be openly investigated.
The argument goes like this: yes, the financial sector has behaved very badly, even criminally; but the establishment of a royal commission to examine the seemingly endless stream of scandals could lead to a devastating loss of confidence.
It’s an odd line to run, not least because it clearly presupposes such a commission would turn up evidence of behaviour that would shock us even more than we have been shocked by the serial revelations of malfeasance over the past decade. Still, they are flogging it for all it is worth.
None more dramatically than Warwick McKibbin, conservative economist from the ANU and Howard government appointee to the Reserve Bank board (2001-11), who seems to suggest a royal commission into the banks would be dangerous on a global scale. “If you look at the state of the world economy at the moment, there’s a lot of fragility,” he tells The Saturday Paper. “The politics of this is very dangerous in the way in which it could affect people’s confidence.”
Wow! Since Australia is a full bought and paid for American colony, you just have to know that they’re banking system is equally as corrupt—and nothing said in the above four paragraphs gives me the warm fuzzies. I haven’t read the whole article, but from the parts I have read, it’s more than worth your while. It appeared on thesaturdaypaper.com.au Internet site on Saturday, of course—and I thank Australian reader J.W. for his second offering in today’s column. Another link to this worthwhile news item is here.
N.Y. Post picks up on Deutsche’s confession but where are other news organizations?
While the New York Post yesterday took note of Deutsche Bank’s confession to gold and silver market manipulation and its pledge to incriminate other banks — see the report appended — as far as your secretary/treasurer can determine, only Reuters and Bloomberg News, among mainstream financial news organizations, have yet reported the story, not counting the predictably snarky and beside-the-point commentary Friday in the Financial Times by its columnist John Dizard.
GATA has alerted most major Western financial news organizations to the Deutsche Bank story, though they were almost certainly fully aware of it already.
While Deutsche Bank’s confession makes gold and silver market rigging impossible to deny, financial news organizations remain willing to suppress the story as they have been doing for years, lest they aggravate their advertisers and governments. So while the struggle is slowly breaking our way, it very much continues, with financial news organizations and gold and silver mining companies bearing much responsibility for the injustice they won’t acknowledge.
The New York Post story is embedded in this story that was posted on the gata.org Internet site on Sunday afternoon EDT—and another link to this article is here.
What does Deutsche Bank’s confession mean for gold and silver investors?
What do Deutsche Bank’s confession to gold and silver market rigging and its pledge to incriminate other bullion banks mean?
Almost certainly they mean more litigation on top of the federal class-action lawsuit in New York that prompted the confession and pledge. Beyond that it’s anyone’s guess.
Of course gold traders, investors, and gold and silver mining companies and their investors are wondering what’s in it for them. That’s hard to say.
Ordinarily in a successful class-action lawsuit the court devises remediation that is available to everyone affected by the misconduct at issue in the suit — available not just to the plaintiffs named in the suit but to everyone similarly situated, everyone damaged by the misconduct. Once the court settles on such remediation, its availability is publicized to potential members of the class and they are invited to register with the court so they may be paid. So no one has to become a plaintiff in the suit to receive damages.
This commentary by GATA secretary/treasurer Chris Powell is certainly worth reading—and it put in an appearance on the gata.org Internet site at 10:14 p.m. EST on Sunday evening. Another link to this GATA dispatch is here.
Funds Are Betting the Gravity-Defying Gold Rally Isn’t Over Yet
When it comes to gold, hedge funds are betting that what goes up will continue to go up.
Even after bullion’s best start to a year since at least 1975, investors are positioning themselves for more gains. Money managers increased their wagers on a price rally to the highest since 2012, taking their optimism to a level last seen before a three-year bear market started.
The metal has jumped 17 percent this year. Federal Reserve officials are cautious about raising U.S. interest rates amid persistent risks facing the global outlook. Investors are snapping up bullion as the shaky economy picture spurs haven demand, while low borrowing costs keep the metal competitive against interest-bearing assets.
“There’s a lot of fundamental uncertainty out there, and of course gold has long-term stability,” said Josh Crumb, the chief strategy officer who helps oversee $1.7 billion at Toronto-based GoldMoney. “The upside is still greater than the downside.”
This gold-related news item, which also contains a 6:07 minute video interview with Jim Rickards by two brainless talking heads, showed up on the Bloomberg website at 2 p.m. Denver time on Sunday afternoon—and I thank “Tesla 3D” for bringing it to my attention—and now to yours. Another link to this story/video clip is here.
Jim Rickards: Gold is the spectre haunting our monetary system
The ubiquitous Jim Rickards has broken into The Telegraph and London with an essay explaining why gold just won’t go away and why various nations have an interest in continuing to recognize it as the best sort of money even as others are determined to stamp it out.
Rickards’ must read essay is headlined “Gold Is the Spectre Haunting Our Monetary System” and it was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site at 10:27 p.m. BST on their Sunday evening, which was 5:27 p.m. in New York—EDT plus 5 hours. This comes right out of his latest book “The New Case For Gold“—which I’ve read—and recommend to anyone. I found this in a GATA release—and the introductory first paragraph is courtesy of Chris Powell.
Austrian Mint Gold Sales Set Record in 2015
The Austrian Mint sold 1.3 million ounces of gold in 2015. This was up 215% from 2014 when the Austrian Mint sold 910 million ounces of gold. Austrian Mint gold sales in 2015 exceeded the combined 2015 U.S. Mint American Gold Eagle and Perth Mint gold sales.
Austrian Mint spokeswoman Andrea Lang told Bloomberg News that the Austrian Mint’s gold sales were a reaction to the negative interest rates instituted across the European Union. A common knock against gold is that it doesn’t pay interest. That complaint is neutralized when gold is compared against cash deposits, which lose money by remaining in bank accounts and are subject to potential “bail-ins” whereby depositors may lose some of their deposits if the banks where they keep their money become insolvent.
Gold was the best performing asset in the first quarter of 2016 and the Austrian Mint expects sales to remain strong through 2016. Indeed, in the first quarter of 2016, the European Central Bank announced additional stimulus and took interest rates further into negative territory. These initiatives should make gold even more attractive to cash depositors in Europe.
This brief gold-related news item is something that was posted on the townhall.com Internet on Monday sometime—and I found it on the Sharps Pixley website last night. Another link to this story is here.
Apple just collected $40 million in recycled gold
Just call Apple the modern day King Midas. Not only do the vast majority of its products seem to produce gold (if not turn into the precious metal), but the company also managed to turn quite a hefty profit in a recycling project. Leave it to the Cupertino-based firm to figure out a way to literally turn one man’s trash into treasure. A new report suggests that the company recovered 2,204 pounds (over a ton), of gold from recycled Apple devices. That includes iPhones, iPads, and Macs that were discarded over the course of 2015, and in total, the gold added up to an impressive $40 million.
It’s not that Apple is plating all of its devices in 24 karats, but rather that the metal is actually used in a variety of applications in consumer electronics. Due to its conductivity and aversion to corrosion, gold is often chosen over silver (the best conductor, but also highly corrosive), as well as copper (which is very cheap, but not a great conductor). As such, you can find a bit of gold in most the higher end electronic devices you have at home.
Sure, no individual Apple user has that much gold sitting in his or her electronics-laden household, but last year, Apple managed to generate some 90 million pounds of e-waste by way of its recycling programs. Two-thirds of that amount was in reusable materials, and while gold was a very small proportion, its high value at current market rates still made that tiny percentage incredibly valuable.
This story appeared on the digitaltrends.com Internet site on Sunday sometime—and it’s the second story in a row that I borrowed from the Sharps Pixley website. Another link to this news item is here.
The PHOTOS and the FUNNIES
I was out to the usual local pond on both Saturday and Sunday because the weather was perfect, especially on Sunday. On Saturday, the common mergansers, which I’d photographed at least ten days before with limited success, were still there—and they decide to cooperate this time, but only barely. The first two photos are of them together. The first was taken on the way to the photo shoot—and the second when they left. I would have liked some eye-glint in the second photo, but they are what they are. The male’s iridescent green head is visible in both shots.
The WRAP
I didn’t see any news on the IMF meeting over the weekend—and the first I read about it was in the lead story in today’s column by David Stockman. The main stream media were very quiet on this news event. But the attempted rallies in all four precious metals at the New York open on Sunday evening, ended as they always have—and that’s crushed under the jackboots of JPMorgan et al. Even the gains during the COMEX trading session in New York weren’t allowed to stand.
But I was happy to see the slender gains in the gold stocks—and the somewhat more impressive gains in the silver equities, especially considering that ‘da boyz’ closed both precious metals lower on the day.
Here are the 6-month charts for the four precious metals—and not much happened, or was allowed to happen, compared to their respective closes on Friday.
Well, the story about Deutsche Bank rigging the gold and silver market along with Scotiabank and others, was front and center on every precious metal website on the Internet over the weekend—and even Sharps Pixley carried it.
But as Ted Butler said in his weekly commentary on Sunday—“Deutsche Bank didn’t admit to rigging the price of silver, as that’s the whole purpose of settlement—to avoid any such admission of guilt.” He also pointed out that it was a civil case, not a criminal case—and unless the manipulation scheme ends up where it belongs—“centered on the COMEX and JPMorgan—it’s hard for me to get terribly excited at this point.” But he went on to say that although they “were not the main focus of last week’s legal development, both are clearly in the crosshairs.”
So we wait some more.
And as I type this paragraph, the London open is less than ten minutes away—and I see that gold was forced down to its current low tick around 8:30 a.m. HKT on their Tuesday morning—and began to chop higher from there. But it really took the bit between its teeth shortly before 2 p.m. HKT—and is up a little more than 7 bucks the ounce as of this writing. Silver chopped around unchanged until shortly before 2 p.m. HKT—and its current chart pattern on Kitco looks like the beginnings of a NASA space launch, as that precious metal is now up 42.5 cents. Platinum followed a similar chart pattern to gold—and is currently up 12 dollars an ounce. Platinum is trying hard to keep up with the chart pattern in silver, as it’s currently up 7 dollars an ounce.
Net HFT gold volume is around 35,500 contracts—and that number in silver is very chunky at a hair over 12,000 contracts, with about twenty percent of gross volume being roll-overs out of the May contract. The dollar index made it as high as 94.55 in early Hong Kong trading, but has rolled over since—and is down 16 basis points at 94.30 as London opens.
Armed with the fact that there is now admission in the public domain by Deutsche Bank that silver and gold prices are being rigged by the bullion banks at the fix, it’s a near certainty that the World Gold Council and The Silver Institute will do precisely nothing. The reason being that it’s in the best interests of their members—and the shareholders of their members.
This is particularly true of The Silver Institute, where the CME Group is a member—and in order to protect its criminal activities, plus that of one of its principal clients, JPMorgan—they will certainly be active in keeping the rest of the members in line, because they have not a gonad between them.
Sad, but true! And I wish I was kidding, but I’m not.
If you’d like to try your hand at goading them into doing something, you can contact the WGC here—and The Silver Institute here. But don’t expect a reply from either one of them, because they don’t want to hear from us, the great unwashed. And even though both organizations deserve your contempt, please keep it thinly disguised. But in all seriousness, you should be polite.
And as I post today’s column on the website at 4:08 a.m. EDT, I note that JPMorgan et al were right there minutes after the London open to end it all in all four precious metals, at least for the moment. Gold is up 11 bucks, but obviously off its high. And although they stopped silver in its tracks as well, the price of that precious metal is still up 41.5 cents the ounce. Platinum is up 9 dollars at the moment, but was up about double that amount at the Zurich/London open. Palladium is up 6 bucks.
Net HFT gold volume is sky high at 54,000 contracts—and that number in silver is an over-the-moon 21,900 contracts. That’s the largest net volume in silver I’ve ever seen at this time of day. It should be obvious that the powers-that-be are going short all comers in the COMEX futures market, as they try to prevent the nuclear price explosions that are inevitable at some point in the future. The dollar index hit its current 94.24 low about fifteen minutes before the London open—and is currently down 11 basis points.
If you’re looking for obvious market rigging, it’s going on right before your eyes—and there’s no reason to dwell on the London p.m. gold fix.
Now that the price management scheme is fully out in the open, there can be no denying it on any level—and unless ‘da boyz’ have instructions to hold prices down at any and all costs, it shouldn’t be long before the 21st century equivalent of the London gold pool breaths its last.
That can’t come too soon for me, or you either I’m sure.
See you here tomorrow.
Ed
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