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LBMA misleads Silver Market with False Claims about Record Silver Stocks

May 12, 2021

LBMA misleads Silver Market with False Claims about Record Silver Stocks

In a shocking retraction, the bullion bank dominated London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has just announced that it has been overstating LBMA silver vault holdings by a massive 3,300 tonnes of silver.

This overstatement relates to the total quantity of physical silver bars that the LBMA claimed were being held in LBMA vaults in London as of end of March 2021.

These LBMA vaults in London are operated by three banks, namely the infamous JP Morgan, the equally infamous HSBC, and the maybe not so infamous ICBC Standard Bank, and three security vaulters, Brinks, Malca Amit and Loomis.

On 9 April, to much fanfare, the LBMA published updated monthly vault data for London vaulted silver bars, claiming that as of end of March 2021, total silver held in LBMA London vaults had risen by a whopping 11.04% during March from 1.125 billion ozs (34,996 tonnes) to 1.249 billion ozs (38,859 tonnes), i.e. an increase of 124 million ozs or 3863 tonnes.

LBMA even claimed that this surge in silver holdings meant that there were record stocks of silver in London, titling it’s press release, ‘Record Stocks of Silver in London Vaults – End March 2021’:

“As at end March 2021, there was a record stock of silver held in London vaults. In total there was 38,859 tonnes of silver, representing an 11% increase on the previous month, valued at $30 billion which equates to approximately 1,259,310 silver bars.”

This, it turns out, was not true.

False Claim – It was Not a Record 

However, for an entire month the LBMA let this fiction persist, before deciding to change its claim on 10 May when it released a statement saying that:

“A data submission error led to the publication of an incorrect aggregate figure for the total silver held in London vaults in March. The corrected figure is 1,143,194 Troy ounces (‘000s).“

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

“Panic Stations”: What Are The LBMA And COMEX Trying To Hide?

April 3, 2020

“Panic Stations”: What Are The LBMA And COMEX Trying To Hide?

Between 1962 and 1968, a cartel of central banks from the US and Europe ran a price manipulation scheme in London, aiming to keep the price of gold at $35 per ounce. They did this by constant intervention into the market, pooling their gold reserves to sell down the market. Conceived and coordinated at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland by the G10 central bank governors, the dirty work of actual gold market intervention was done by the Pool’s agent, the Bank of England gold trading desk in London. 

The syndicate, known as the London Gold Pool was successful until it wasn’t, with the beginning of the end in early March 1968 as the huge run on gold became a tidal wave with sterling and US dollar weakness. On 10 March 1968, a Sunday, the consortium released a statement claiming that: “the London Gold Pool reaffirm their determination to support the pool at a fixed price of $35 per ounce”. At the same time, Fed chairman William McChesney Martin even vowed that the US would defend the Pool “to the last ingot”.  

The Pool then proceeded to airlift hundreds of tonnes of gold bars from the US Treasury’s Fort Knox to RAF Mildenhall, which they dumped into the London market for the rest of the week (March 11 -14). With all the Good Delivery Gold siphoned off to the Market (actually a consortium of European merchant banks), the Rothschild and the Bank of England pulled the plug, and the London Gold Pool collapsed on the evening of 14 March 1968, ushering in an era of free market gold prices.

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

“The Gold Market Is Breaking Down”: Gold Spreads Explode As LBMA Warns Of Liquidity Problems

March 24, 2020

“The Gold Market Is Breaking Down”: Gold Spreads Explode As LBMA Warns Of Liquidity Problems

Last night, when observing the unprecedented “gold run” on precious metals dealers which has left all gold vendors with little to no physical gold, we said that “the price of physical gold has decoupled from paper gold” as a result of paper gold liquidations as leveraged funds scramble to cover margin calls using safe assets…

… resulting in an arbitrage that physical gold buyers, i.e., those who don’t have faith in gold ETFs such as the GDX or simply prefer to have possession of the metal, find especially delightful as it allows them to buy physical gold at lower prices than they would ordinarily have access to.

However, we also noted that whereas in the past such conditions were self-correcting, this time it is not only a record surge in demand for physical gold but also a near shut down in supply as the most productive gold refiners, those located in the southern Swiss town of Ticina, namely Valcambi, Pamp and Argor-Heraeus, now appear to be offline indefinitely.

The result is that the spot/futures price divergence discussed last night and further described here,  has exploded…

… and on Tuesday morning the divergence that was barely noticeable late Monday has blown out to unprecedented level, with gold futures decoupling and trading far above spot prices.

The near record spread is the widest seen in four years.

As Kitko notes, just before noon EDT, one price vendor was showing spot metal was trading at $1,612.10 an ounce while at the same time showing the Comex April futures were at $1,654.10 an ounce – a spread of $42 an ounce. It was much wider earlier in the day, when as Kitco adds, “nearby futures were more expensive than deferred, a sign of strong demand in any commodity market.”

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

LBMA Clearing and Vaulting data reveal the absurdity of the London ‘Gold’ Market

October 3, 2018

LBMA Clearing and Vaulting data reveal the absurdity of the London ‘Gold’ Market

The first day of each month sees the reporting of a number of statistics about the London Gold Market by the bullion bank led London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). These statistics focus on clearing data and vault holdings data and are reported in a 1 month lag basis for clearing activity and a 3 month lag basis for vault holdings data. Therefore the latest clearing data just published is for the month of August, while the latest vault holdings data is for the end of June.

While LBMA clearing data has been published for many years now, publication of vault holdings data by the LBMA is a recent phenomenon and only began at the end of July 2017. As the LBMA press release at the time stated:

“The physical holdings of precious metals held in the London vaults underpin the gross daily trading and net clearing in London. The net clearing is undertaken by the members of the London Precious Metals Clearing Limited (LPMCL).”

Although in both cases the data reported lacks any granularity and are just rolled up numbers, the two sets of statistics are useful in that they highlight the clear contradiction that exists between the huge volumes of fractionally-backed paper trading in the London Gold Market, and the relatively small quantities of underlying physical gold that sit in the gold vaults of the same institutions engaged in this ‘gold’ trading, quantities which are even smaller when Bank of England and ETF gold holdings are excluded.

LBMA gold vaulting data report for end of June 2018: Published 1st October

Vault Holdings – Underpinning ‘Gold’ trading

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

Gold EFPs: Absolute Proof That Paper Gold Is A Fraud

December 22, 2017

Gold EFPs: Absolute Proof That Paper Gold Is A Fraud

IRD’s Note:  In the past year, there has been a noticeably substantial  increase in the use of the obscurely defined EFPs (Exchange for Physicals) and PNTs (Privately Negotiated Transactions) in the settlement of Comex gold and silver futures contracts.  In simple terms, the EFPs and PNTs enable the counterparties  a Comex futures contract or LBMA forward to settle the contract in an acceptable form other than the actual physical commodity as required by the contract specifications (e.g. one gold futures contract requires the delivery of a 100 oz. gold bar as qualified by the Comex).  As an example, the counterparty that is required to deliver gold under Comex contract terms can deliver a comparable dollar amount of GLD shares if the counterparty standing for delivery agrees to take delivery of the GLD shares.

The EFPs and PNTs plunge the Comex operations into even greater opacity – likely intentionally.  In all probability, the EFPs and PNTs are used to bridge the gap between the amount of gold (silver) that needs to be delivered and the amount of gold (silver) that is available to be delivered.  The settlement of the contract occurs outside of the Comex.  These contract settlement devices further enable the ability of the western Central Banks to execute the successful manipulation of the gold (silver) price.

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In recent months, the issuance of gold Exchange for Physical (EFP) contracts has surged. EFPs convert a physically deliverable Comex gold contract into an LBMA or LME contract supposedly deliverable at a later date ex London and/or Hong Kong. As an incentive for Comex contract holders to accept EFPs, a cash bonus reportedly is paid. EFPs in silver are also being issued in vast quantities, but we will focus on gold for brevity.

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

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