The COMEX Issues and Stops Reports Expose Conditions Behind Physical Gold Supply Problems
Currently, the latest COMEX Issues and Stops reports expose conditions behind the COMEX physical gold supply problems. Though I have written about the various reasons why physical gold supply problems manifest many times in the past, this topic still remains one rarely discussed by financial journalists, and never discussed by the mass financial media. For client accounts, when bullion banks stop more notices than issued, they, will lose physical inventory. For house accounts, the opposite is true. When bullion banks issue more notices than stops, then they will lose physical inventory as well. Normally, when bullion banks manufacture waterfall declines in paper gold and silver prices, as they did earlier this month, with the complicity of the CME’s largely unreported rampage in raising initial and maintenance margins on futures contracts many times within a 2-month period in the midst of a stock market crash, they load up on physical gold and silver for their house accounts while ensuring that their clients take almost zero delivery of physical gold and silver ounces. However, if they are unable to execute this clever strategy, this is when physical gold supply problems can manifest.
In fact, I have not seen a single news site in the entire world, except for my own, mention the relentless increase in initial and maintenance margins in gold and silver futures contracts (the 100-oz gold futures contract and the 5000-oz silver futures contract) for the past two months, in a desperate attempt to knock long positions out of the game and thereby prevent an increasing amount of physical delivery requests. Just recently, the CME raised margins yet again for 100-oz gold futures contracts to $9,185/$8,350 for initial/maintenance margins, representing a massive 86% increase in margins, and for 5000-oz silver futures contracts to $9.900/$9,000 for initial/maintenance margins, representing a gigantic 73% increase in margins, in just a couple months’ time.
