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On Guard Against The Banks

On Guard Against The Banks - Craig Hemke

Following the events of yesterday, it seems wise this morning to take an in-depth look at the charts in order to discern what moves The Banks may take next in the hope of stemming this rally and reversing the trends.

Let’s start with Comex Digital Gold. It has been in an UPtrend since July 10 and this rally has carried it $150 or about 12.5%. In doing so, The Commercials on the CoT have increased their NET short position by 182,000 contracts and, specifically, the 24 Banks of the Bank Participation Report have doubled their NET short position, going from 104,748 contracts NET short in July to 213,746 NET short last week.

This places the CoT in its “worst” position since last September and this BPR reveals the largest NET short position on record. Therefore, you KNOW that The Banks will do just about anything at this point to reverse the trend and begin flushing The Specs back out of paper gold. Though they are clearly capable of pulling this off, it may take them a while to do it. Why, you ask?

For CDG, it’s all about the moving averages. We noted early last week that CDG’s 50-day had bullishly crossed UP and through both its 10-day and 200-day MAs. This is a very bullish trend indicator and, most importantly, it sets the Spec HFTs into a “buy the dip mode”. You can see this playing out already when you look at the daily chart.

Also last week, we began to discuss the significance of the $1331 level as support in any pullback. This was the level of resistance and then support in late August so we hoped/expected that same action on any pullback. And look what has happened thus far this week! Even though the all-important USDJPY is up another 50 pips today and pressing against 110, Comex gold is hanging firm at….$1332! For us, this is clear evidence of the HFTs buying the dip.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jim Rickards: The New Case For Gold

Jim Rickards: The New Case For Gold

A powerful set of arguments for owning the yellow metal

Monetary expert Jim Rickards returns this week to share the insights from his latest work The New Case For Gold, a detailed and highly-researched study of the fundamentals likely to drive the price of gold bullion in the years to come.

Rickards is quite confident that the price is going higher — much higher in fact — as the current world fiat currency regimes falter, to be replaced by ones backed (at least in part) by bullion.

On the way to that outcome, expect the price to be subjugated to the interests and aims of the largest players on the geopolitical chessboard:

Is there gold price manipulation going on? Absolutely; there’s no question about it. That’s not just an opinion.

I spoke to a PhD statistician who works for one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. I can’t mention the name but it’s a household name, you would know the fund. This guy is a PhD statistician. He looked at COMEX opening prices and COMEX closing prices for a 10-year period and he was dumbfounded. He said…This is the most blatant case of manipulation I’ve ever seen. He said if you went into the aftermarket, bought after the close and sold before the opening every day, you would make risk-free profits. He said statistically that’s impossible unless there’s manipulation going on.

I spoke to Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz at the New York University Stern School of Business. She is the leading expert on globe price manipulation. She actually testifies in some of these gold manipulation cases that are going on. She wrote a report reaching the same conclusions. It’s not just an opinion, it’s not just a deep, dark conspiracy theory. Here’s a PhD statistician and a prominent market expert lawyer, expert witness in litigation qualified by the courts, who independently reached the same conclusion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold is the only sound money

Gold is the only sound money

This article notes that the technical situation for the gold price has sharply improved, to the evident surprise of many mainstream analysts. It discusses possible reasons behind the turnaround, and implications for the future.

The technical situation is shown in the chart below.

Golden Cross

A “golden cross”, with the 55 day moving average crossing above the 200 day moving average with both of them on a rising trend, and the share price above both these moving averages, has now occurred. This is generally taken by traders to indicate the bear trend has reversed, and a bull market is now in place.

More interestingly, this change of direction is combined with a bullish pennant pattern, which commenced on 11th February and completed on 3rd March, taking precisely three weeks. This is shown by the dotted lines. The intraday price movements (not shown) conform exactly to the pattern, and the break-out on 4th March saw high volume with an increase to a record amount of outstanding Comex contracts.

The other technical qualifications for a pennant are also fully satisfied. It follows a sharp rise, is a consolidation lasting no more than three or at most four weeks, volume diminished while the pattern played out (taking Comex volumes as proxy), and the break-out was a resumption of the trend. It therefore appears to be a text-book example.

Pennants give us a price objective, which equates to the preceding rise from its breakout point. This yields a minimum price target of approximately $1400, which with pennants can happen quite quickly. And that helps explain, from a purely technical point of view, the seemingly unstoppable strength in the gold price.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Something Really Snapped At The Comex

Something Really Snapped At The Comex

There had been an eerie silence at the Comex in recent weeks, where after registered gold tumbled to a record 120K ounces in early December nothing much had changed, an in fact the total amount of physical deliverable aka “registered” gold, had stayed practically unchanged at 275K ounces all throughout January.

Until today, when in the latest update from the Comex vault, we learn that a whopping 201,345 ounces of Registered gold had been de-warranted at the owner’s request, and shifted into the Eligible category, reducing the total mount of Comex Registered gold by 73%, from 275K to just 74K overnight.

This took place as a result of adjustments at vaults belonging to Scotia Mocatta (-95K ounces), HSBC (-85K ounces), and Brink’s (-21K ounces).

Meanwhile, the aggregate gold open interest remained largely unchanged, at just about 40 million ounces.

This means that the ratio which we have been carefully tracking since August 2015 when it first blew out, namely the “coverage ratio” that shows the total number of gold claims relative to the physical gold that “backs” such potential delivery requests, – or simply said  physical-to-paper gold dilution – just exploded.

As the chart below shows – which is disturbing without any further context – the 40 million ounces of gold open interest and the record low 74 thousand ounces of registered gold imply that as of Monday’s close there was a whopping 542 ounces in potential paper claims to every ounces of physical gold. Call it a 0.2% dilution factor.

To be sure, skeptics have suggested that depending on how one reads the delivery contract, the Comex can simply yank from the pool of eligible gold and use it to satisfy delivery requests despite the explicit permission (or lack thereof) of the gold’s owner.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold Analyst Warns of Leverage: “There Are About 325 Paper Ounces For Every Physical Ounce Backing It”

Gold Analyst Warns of Leverage: “There Are About 325 Paper Ounces For Every Physical Ounce Backing It”

paper-and-real-gold

Back in September Zero Hedgereported that something snapped in the COMEX market and all indicators suggest there was a relentless outflow in registered gold. At that time there were about 202,054 ounces of gold available for delivery. To put that into perspective, Craig Hemke of TF Metals Report points out that just earlier this year there were nearly one million registered ounces available.

What this likely means is that someone, somewhere is requesting that their paper holdings be converted into deliverable physical gold. All the while many a mainstream pundit has declared that gold is nothing but a relic of times past. Yet, despite its purported unpopularity, since the last time the COMEX snapped in September even more registered gold has disappeared.

As of December, notes Hemke in his latest interview with Crush The Street, we’ve hit an all-time low in registered physical metal at the COMEX which has in turn led to a massive amount of leverage.

We’re at an all time low of about 120,000 [ounces of registered holdings].

But yet the total open interest- the amount of paper contracts based upon that declining amount of physical metal – has stayed the same.

Now, there’s about 325 paper ounces for every one physical ounce backing it. In the past that number was always around 10-to-1 or 20-to-1.

It’s another one of these data points that we follow that seems to indicate a global physical tightness.

In the full interview Hemke explains what this means for the gold market, as well as why the leverage in COMEX precious metals is significantly different than stock markets:


(Watch At Youtube)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

About 38% of All the Comex Gold in Hong Kong Left the Warehouses Yesterday

About 38% of All the Comex Gold in Hong Kong Left the Warehouses Yesterday

Perhaps it went out for some dim sum.  TTFN, but be right back!

Roughly 21 tonnes, or 685,652 troy ounces of gold in .999 fine kilo bars, was withdrawn, net of a small deposit of 27,328 ounces, from the Brinks warehouse in Hong Kong yesterday.

To put that into some perspective, that is the same amount of all gold in the entire JPM warehouse in the US.

Now compared to the Comex US, in which very little gold bullion actually changes hands or goes anywhere, that is a huge number.  But Hong Kong is typically seeing large inflows and outflows of gold.  Because that is how the precious metals market has been manifesting in Asia since about 2007: not with endless chains of paper just changing hands in a grand game of liar’s poker, but with the physical exchange of bullion.

And most of that bullion leaves the warehouse and does not come right back, as Koos Jansen has explained repeatedly about the operations on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.  It is being accumulated on the mainland, and this probably does not include the PBOC official purchases.

The point of this is that the price discovery in New York is becoming increasingly distinct from the actual physical supply and demand flows of bullion which are taking place in Asia.  As I have said, gold is ‘trading like a modern currency’ without respect to its nature as a commodity bound by physical supply.  The Fed et al. can print money, but they cannot print bullion.  That is the point of it.

And that is a potentially dangerous development, especially with respect to a commodity that is being traded at a leverage in excess of 200:1.  And in the face of shrinking inventories of gold available for delivery at current prices in both New York and London….click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Blatant Gold/Silver Manipulation Reflects The Complete Corruption Of The U.S. System

Blatant Gold/Silver Manipulation Reflects The Complete Corruption Of The U.S. System

I friend called me that morning and I told him to not get excited because when the FOMC policy decision hits the tape, they will annihilate gold and push the S&P 500 up toward 2100.   I was only 10 pts off on the S&P call, as the S&P 500 closed at 2090, up an absurd 24 points.  Gold was taken to the cleaners:

ComexGold

SPX

What’s incredible is not one mainstream media analyst or reporter questions this market action. If the premise behind the gold sell-off was a “hawkish” FOMC statement and the threat of a rate hike in December (yawn), then the exact same premise should have cause a big sell-off in stocks. Since when does the threat of tighter monetary policy not hit the stock market?

Just to recount the play-by-play in gold, the moment the FOMC announcement hit the tape, the Comex computer system was bombarded with sell orders. At this point in the trading day, the ONLY gold/silver market open is the Comex computer Globex system. In the first 30 minutes 29.6k contracts were unloaded – 2.6 million paper ounces. In the entire hour after the announcement 50.5k contracts were unloaded – 5.1 million ounces. Note that the Comex is showing around 200k ounces to be available for delivery.

The blatant, unfettered manipulation and intervention in the gold and silver market is sponsored by the Fed and the U.S. Treasury, executed by the big bullion banks and fully endorsed by the CFTC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Anyone Who Believes The COMEX Numbers Is Very Naive (They Are Much Worse!)

Anyone Who Believes The COMEX Numbers Is Very Naive (They Are Much Worse!)

“The information in this report is taken from sources believed to be reliable; however, the Commodity Exchange, Inc. disclaims all liability whatsoever with regard to its accuracy or completeness. This report is produced for information purposes only.”

– disclaimer now posted on the Comex gold and silver daily warehouse stock report as of Monday, June 3, 2013 – Investment Research Dynamics – June 4, 2013

Yesterday we published an article detailing the Comex gold futures to deliverable physical gold ratio that is now north of 200:1.  But an erudite colleague of mine, John Titus of “Best Evidence,” correctly pointed out that:  “They are probably bluffing.  In other words, the real number is significantly higher than 200:1.

 

For the record, John does more thorough research on the economic numbers and reports that he studies than anyone I’ve ever come across.  And he does it with the trained analytic eye of a seasoned patent litigation attorney.

Let’s put everything in perspective.  The numerical reports from which fancy graphs and and dry detailed data presentations are created originate from the Too Big To Fail Banks. I’ve said for quite some time that IF the bullion banks who control the Comex and the LBMA are submitting honest data reports for the Comex and LBMA, it would be the only business line in which they do not hide the truth and report fraudulent numbers.  What is the probability of that?

JP Morgan was recently caught stuffing proprietary Comex futures short-sell trades into the “Managed Money” account category of the COT report.  The CFTC scolded JPM and slapped them with a whopping $650,000 – LINK.    Does anyone really believe that the CFTC wrist-slapping corrected any fraudulent data reporting by the likes of JP Morgan?  Really?

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Something Just Snapped At The Comex (Updated)

Something Just Snapped At The Comex (Updated)

Update: Earlier today, we said that we would “keep a close eye on today’s Comex update to see if JPM reverses this “adjustment” and adds at least a few more tons of deliverable gold to its vault.” Moments ago we got the daily update form the Comex and not only did JPM not reverse its registered to eligible adjustment, but more curiously, the second largest vault, that of Scotia Mocatta (behind only HSBC) saw a comparable adjustment, whereby 16,644 ounces of gold, or about half a ton, and 14% of its vault total, were adjusted away from “registered” and into the “eliglble” category.

This means that the already record low total registered holding across the Comex system, declined once again this time by 8.3% and hit a new all time low of 185,315, or less than 6 tons.

This means that what was already a record dilution factor, with over 200 ounces of paper gold claims for every ounce of deliverable gold, just soared even more, and following today’s 8% drop, there is now a unprecedented 228 ounces of paper claims for every ounce of deliverable “registered” gold.

For those who missed the full story from earlier today, please read on.

 

* * *

Just over one month ago, when looking at the latest changes in registered gold held at the Comex ,we were stunned not only by the collapse in this series to a record low of just over 350k ounces or barely over 10 tons, but also by the surge in “gold coverage”, or the amount of paper gold claims on physical gold, which exploded to a record high 124 per ounce.

 

 

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Comex On The Edge? Paper Gold “Dilution” Hits A Record 124 For Every Ounce Of Physical

Comex On The Edge? Paper Gold “Dilution” Hits A Record 124 For Every Ounce Of Physical

Over the weekend, we got what was merely the latest confirmation that when it comes to sliding gold prices, consumer of physical gold just can’t get enough. As the Times of India reported over the weekend, India’s gold imports shot up by about 61 per cent to 155 tonnes in the first two months of the current fiscal “due to weak prices globally and the easing of restrictions by the Reserve Bank. In April-May of the last fiscal, gold imports had aggregated about 96 tonnes, an official said.”

This follows confirmations previously that with the price of gold sliding, physical demand has been through the roof, case in point: “US Mint Sells Most Physical Gold In Two Years On Same Day Gold Price Hits Five Year Low“, “Gold Bullion Demand Surges – Perth Mint and U.S. Mint Cannot Meet Demand“, “Gold Tumbles Despite UK Mint Seeing Europeans Rush To Buy Bullion” and so on. Indicatively, as of Friday, the US Mint had sold 170,000 ounces of gold bullion in July: the fifth highest on record, and we expect today’s month-end update to push that number even higher.

But while the dislocation between demand for physical and the price of paper gold has been extensively discussed here over the years, most recently in “Gold And The Silver Stand-Off: Is The Selling Of Paper Gold And Silver Finally Ending?”, something unexpected happened at the CME on Friday afternoon which may be the most important observation yet.

Recall that in the middle of 2013, in an extensive series of articles, we covered what was then a complete collapse in Comex vaulted holding of registered (i.e., deliverable) gold.  At the time the culprit was JPM, where for some still unexplained reason, the gold held in the newest Comex’ vault plunged by nearly 2 million ounces in just six short months.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices?

Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices?

We have explained on a number of occasions how the Federal Reserves’ agents, the bullion banks (principally JPMorganChase, HSBC, and Scotia) sell uncovered shorts (“naked shorts”) on the Comex (gold futures market) in order to drive down an otherwise rising price of gold. By dumping so many uncovered short contracts into the futures market, an artificial increase in “paper gold” is created, and this increase in supply drives down the price.

This manipulation works because the hedge funds, the main purchasers of the short contracts, do not intend to take delivery of the gold represented by the contracts, settling instead in cash. This means that the banks who sold the uncovered contracts are never at risk from their inability to cover contracts in gold. At any given time, the amount of gold represented by the paper gold contracts (“open interest’) can exceed the actual amount of physical gold available for delivery, a situation that does not occur in other futures markets.

In other words, the gold and silver futures markets are not a place where people buy and sell gold and silver. These markets are places where people speculate on price direction and where hedge funds use gold futures to hedge other bets according to the various mathematical formulas that they use. The fact that bullion prices are determined in this paper, speculative market, and not in real physical markets where people sell and acquire physical bullion, is the reason the bullion banks can drive down the price of gold and silver even though the demand for the physical metal is rising.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

The Government Fraudulently Reported April Inflation Numbers

The Government Fraudulently Reported April Inflation Numbers

There’s no B.S. like the BLS – Dave Kranzler, Investment Research Dynamics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index for April this morning. This Ministry of “Truth” published an inflation report that asserts that consumer inflation rose .1% month over month for April.   But a further dissection of the numbers shows that the BLS has the price of gasoline falling 1.7% during April.

This is either a politically motivated act of fraud or complete incompetence on the part of the Government statisticians and data gatherers (the Census Bureau).

In fact, the price of gasoline rose over 12% during April – the fastest monthly rise in history:

gasoline

As you can see, the price of gasoline rose from $1.77 to $2.00 during the month of April. Either the people running the BLS are complete incompetent idiots or have been given strict orders from above – i.e. the White House – to produce politically friendly economic reports. Let’s call the BLS “The Ministry of Disinformation.”

The BLS’ distortion of the data it reports is far greater and fraudulent that ANYONE is willing to admit, investigate or report.

Here’s what they did to gold after that fraud-filled CPI report was released (click to enlarge):

Gold hit

Any questions as to the political motivation behind the Government’s intentional release of fraudulent economic data?

 

 

Gold Futures Market Used For Fraud

Gold Futures Market Used For Fraud

The Comex is a complete fraud.

It’s one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history.

With China and Viet Nam (the latter being a major gold importing country) now closed until next Wednesday in observance of their Lunar New Year, the bullion banks have engaged in a major attempt to drive the price of gold lower.    Yesterday (Tuesday) 99,000 gold contracts  – 9.9 million ounces or 287 tonnes – were sold into the market between 9 a.m and 11 a.m. EST, which had the effect of driving the price of gold down over $26.  To put this into context, a total of 179,833 contracts traded between 6 p.m. Monday and 5 p.m. Tues. The entire daily trading period is 23 hours. But 55% of yesterday’s total trading volume – the volume used to slam gold – was traded in a two-hour window of NY trading.

Think about it this way:  in that two-hour window, 35 days worth of daily global gold mine production traded in the form of paper gold.  The open interest expanded by 5,290 contracts, which translates into just over 15 tonnes of gold.  The total amount of gold available for delivery – the “registered” account gold – is 804.9k ounces, or 23 tonnes.  In just one day, the bullion banks (JP Morgan, HSBC and Scotia) sold forward 65% of the entire stock of deliverable gold on the Comex. And that’s if you really believe the unaudited bank reports which produce the gold warehouse stock reports.  I do not.

Gold was raided again today (Wednesday, Feb 18) – again at 11:00 a.m. EST. This time gold was slammed another $9 in the space of 30 minutes, most of it in the first seven minutes. Today 18,000 April gold contracts traded in the 30 minute space, representing 24% of the total volume in the April gold contract up to that point since 6:00 p.m EST the previous evening. This is 52 tonnes of paper gold – more than twice the amount of gold in Comex vaults available for delivery.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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