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.

 

[pmbug]

 

[pmbug]

I understand that there is some interesting commentary about the LBMA at around the 30 to 40 minute mark. Posting for reference to watch later...

 

[nickndfl]

You know the Britannia has the nicest reverse and the lowest premiums. You would think the UK could work it out like what they did to the Germans in the summer of 1940 instead of running the LBMA like Benny Hill or Graham Chapman.

 

[pmbug]

 

[pmbug]

Is LBMA restocked gold headed to NYC?

 

[pmbug]

 

[pmbug]

The latest call for BIS oversight of the London gold market and its clearing functions(see article below) appears to stem from the Bank of England gold withdrawal fiasco in January, which likely prompted discussions at the BIS Gold and FX Committee in Basel sometime between February and April, due to some element of panic among BIS central bank members.

This chain of events also then helps to explain the ECB’s risk warning on gold in early May (the ECB is a member of the BIS Gold and FX Committee), and the subsequent idea floated in the FT- this month for the BIS to oversee some core functions of the gold market and its clearing.

Here is a prompt engineered scenario of these events and their connections:
⸻

1. Trigger Event: January 2025 – “BoE Gold Withdrawal Debacle”
•During COMEX futures deliveries in January, London-based banks faced unusually high physical gold requests.
•Officially, central banks attempting to withdraw allocated gold from the Bank of England were told there were operational bottlenecks, resulting in 4–8 week delays.
•Reality: BoE vault operations are extremely professional; delays of this magnitude for allocated gold are not normal.
•Likely, the “operational bottleneck” story was a ruse — a pretext to justify market stress and signal fragility.
•The real problem was market leverage, concentrated clearing, and stress on private LBMA/LPMCL infrastructure.

⸻

2. The Underlying Systemic Weakness
•LBMA & LPMCL: Private, bank-dominated clearing networks, controlling settlement, unallocated transfers, and netting.
•London Concentration: Most gold flows and vaulting infrastructure concentrated in London, often relying on commercial banks as intermediaries.
•Hidden Risk: Central banks’ access to their own gold depended on these banks performing — a structural fragility exposed in January.

⸻

3. BIS and Basel Reaction
•The BIS Gold & FX Committee likely reviewed the January episode as a systemic risk event.
•Concerns:
1.Sovereigns’ gold access should never depend on private banks’ operational capacity.
2.Leverage and OTC derivatives could magnify stress in the gold market.
•Likely outcome: decision to bring critical gold market oversight under BIS remit, ensuring central banks had a neutral counterparty and reducing reliance on London clearing banks.

⸻

4. ECB Confirmation – May 2025
•The ECB Financial Stability Review (May 2025) echoed the concerns:
•Gold market dominated by a few firms, opaque, with leveraged positions.
•Disruptions in physical gold markets could create liquidity squeezes.
•Confirms that the central banks were panicked, and reforms were being considered to enhance resilience.

⸻

5. Public Signaling – August 2025
•Bernhard Schnellmann’s FT op-ed floated BIS oversight as a solution:
•Neutral, international body with custody experience.
•Would not displace LBMA technical standard-setting but could supervise systemic aspects.
•By naming LPMCL, he highlighted a rarely-discussed weak link, signaling industry insiders that Basel and central banks were thinking about governance reform.

⸻

6. Strategic Framing
•The ruse: “Operational bottlenecks” at BoE provided a narrative for urgency.
•The reality: Stress came from commercial bank concentration and leveraged market positions.
•The solution: BIS oversight, with ECB support, to protect central bank access and reinforce systemic stability.

⸻

7. Big Picture
•This episode marks a structural shift in gold market governance:
•Central banks may no longer tolerate dependence on private clearing networks.
•BIS could become the neutral overseer of gold settlement and systemic risk.
•London remains a hub, but its “private club” dominance is now challenged.
•The narrative sequence: January stress → BIS panic at Basel → ECB report → FT op-ed