Today was first notice day for February delivery in gold, and as usual, we had a waterfall raid in gold to $1655.
The cartel MO has long been to raid gold and silver on options
expiration as well as first notice day, to help prevent longs from
standing for delivery.
While the the cartel raid was
successful based on the paper futures price, it was an epic fail based
on physical gold delivery requests, as a monumental 1.391 million ounces, or 43.26 tonnes of gold stood for delivery today on first notice day.
To
put this number in perspective, December delivery in gold, which is
traditionally the largest delivery month of the year, saw less than 10
tonnes stand for delivery.
Has the Buba’s gold repatriation request ignited a full-fledged run on the cartel gold bank?
Today we had first day notice and what a surprise. We had a massive 1,391,000 million oz of gold stand or 43.26 tonnes of gold. I have been following the gold and silver comex data from the mid 1970′s and I have never seen anything like this before.
You will recall that this past December we had only 10 tonnes of gold
delivered upon. Generally December is the biggest delivery month of the
year. The comex is not a physical market. If one needs
physical they generally head over to London at the LBMA and purchase the
metal over there. The high amounts standing may mean that our gentlemen
from Eastern persuasion are having difficulty finding metal and thus
they are heading over to our neck of the woods to obtain this very
valuable commodity.
The total comex gold open
interest rose 425 contracts to settle at 431,137 from Wednesday’s level
of 430,712. We now have the number of contracts for gold standing as
today is first day notice. The total number of contracts
standing for gold is a whopping 13,910 contracts or 1,310,900 oz of gold
which translates to 43.26 tonnes of gold. I am sure that
Blythe will be one busy girl these next few weeks as she tries to entice
some longs standing to accept paper instead of metal. The next non
active contract month is March and here the OI rose from 1087 up to 1211
for a gain of 124 contracts. The estimated volume today at the gold
comex was fair at 161,916. The confirmed volume yesterday was quite
good at 245,696.
In all the years that I have covered the comex I have never seen such a high amount of gold standing. The
comex is a paper market and too see such a high level of gold standing
seems to suggest that the gold investor boys (and sovereigns) are
crossing the pond because physical gold is scarce. London must be out or close to it.
Got PHYZZ??