Bank of England delaying gold deliveries 4 to 8 weeks

[pmbug]

Full 1 hour video of the LBMA webinar was posted here:
...

I would sincerely appreciate anyone with the media skills to make a montage gif from the recent LBMA webcast of the LBMA honchos laughing. I've got a feeling that's going to have some epic meme potential here in the next few months.

Seriously, if you (anyone reading this) have the media skills, I'll give you the timestamps of the video (it's on vimeo) to compile.

 

[pmbug]

 

[pmbug]

Here's an interesting wrinkle on the COMEX hoovering up the LBMA's gold bars:

BREAKING: 50% of COMEX Eligible Gold is still not Eligible as deliverable supply, says COMEX operator CME on 9 December 2024.

Deliverable supply of gold according to COMEX and CME = Registered + 50% of Eligible

Which means that there is far less gold than imagined in Comex vaults to meet gold futures contracts deliveries.

CME’s latest letter to the CFTC, dated 9 December 2024 (after the NY-LN spread had already started to blow out), says that:

“Deliverable supply is calculated as the sum of total reported registered gold with total reported eligible gold, after taking a 50% discount for eligible gold.”

Which means that , based on the latest CME Gold Stocks report of 28th March, instead of 22.75 mn ozs of registered and 20.59 mn ozs of eligible (for a total of 43.34 mn ozs (434,300 contracts)) being available for delivery against CME’s gold futures contracts, as many in MSM claim, there are actually 22.75 mn ozs of registered and 10.29 mn ozs of eligible (for a total of 33.04 mn ozs (330,000 contracts)) of available deliverable supply.

Which is 25% less than just adding registered and eligible together.

Watch for the shorts to spin this one.

See CME letter to CFTC, pages 9-11 of pdf https://cftc.gov/sites/default/files/filings/ptc/24/12/ptc12092410790.pdf

Screenshot below is CME on 9th Dec 2024.

 

[pmbug]

...
In London, the world's largest over-the-counter gold trading hub, the shock of massive supplies to New York has been absorbed and the liquidity improved as the market borrowed from central banks, storing their bullion at the Bank of England's (BoE) vaults.

The waiting time to load gold out of the BoE vaults has narrowed to 2-3 weeks from 4-6 weeks in January, according to three sources familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to reveal operations.
...

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/gold-stocks-comex-warehouses-track-hit-new-records-over-coming-days-2025-03-31/

lol.

 

[pmbug]

As mentioned in the #silversqueeze thread:

A massive arbitrage trade that has drawn tens of billions of dollars’ worth of gold and silver to the US came to an abrupt halt with Wednesday’s announcement that precious metals would be exempt from Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

For several months, prices in New York have traded at large and unusual premiums to global benchmarks as traders weighed the risk that precious metals could be caught up in tariffs. The differential created an incentive for banks and traders to load planes and ships with so much bullion that it distorted US trade data in the process.
...
“Yesterday’s announcement effectively puts an end to the massive flow of precious metals into the US over the last few months as the EFPs collapse,” said Anant Jatia, chief investment officer at Greenland Investment Management, a hedge fund specializing in commodity arbitrage trading.
...

https://www.moneyweb.co.za/mineweb/rush-to-get-gold-to-the-us-halts-abruptly-with-tariff-exemption/

 

[pmbug]

 

[pmbug]

^^^ Willem apparently deleted the tweet that I was quoting wherein he claimed sources told him COMEX metal was flying off the shelves to foreign lands (China, India, "Europe", etc.)

~~~

Checking the EFP spreads this morning I see:

Silver: $0.14 - That's the highest it's been since Trump announced gold and silver exemptions from tariffs.

Gold: ~$17 - very slightly up from yesterday morning.

Positive EFP spread encourages COMEX actors to take delivery of LBMA metal.

 

[pmbug]

Checking the EFP spreads this morning, I saw:

Silver -$0.02
Gold +$14

Silver futures apparently don't believe that the silver market is in a structural deficit (global demand > global production).

 

[pmbug]

 

[searcher]

 

[Goldhedge]

Ponce "If you don't hold it, you don't own it!"

 

[pmbug]

Gold, which traders have been flying to New York since December as a precaution against the possibility of broad U.S. tariffs hitting bullion imports, is being shipped back to Switzerland, where it came from, official data shows.

Swiss customs data on Thursday showed that the country's gold imports from the U.S. rose to a thirteen-month high of 25.5 metric tons in March, from 12.1 tons in February. Gold exports from Switzerland to the U.S. fell 32% month-on-month to 103.2 tons.

U.S. warehouses approved by Comex, part of the CME Group, have seen eight consecutive days of gold outflows, for the first time in fourteen months, daily Comex data showed, as the U.S. futures premium wound down after major dislocation.
...

https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/gold-tariffs-switzerland/2025/04/18/id/1207372/

Is it going to Switzerland to be recast for London? EFP spread for gold is still positive, so that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

[Voodoo]

Is there any place to keep tabs or see what the Liars at the LBMA say delivery times are now?

 

[pmbug]

Is there any place to keep tabs or see what the Liars at the LBMA say delivery times are now?

I'm not aware of any official data. Comments get reported in the news or social media occasionally. Last comment I heard was that delivery times for gold had shortened to 2-3 weeks.