The CME delisted "Enhanced Delivery" gold vault stock from their COMEX reporting as of September 21. That was 4,059,364.4 troy ounces or ~126.3 metric tons that just went "and ... poof! It's gone" with zero explanation as to what happened to it. In the absence of transparency, we are left to speculate and having some time this morning, that's what I've done.
It occurred to me that when a foreign nation repatriates their gold held in the USA, that gold isn't held inside the COMEX system. The Federal Reserve holds that gold in their vaults in NYC. The movement of gold when nations repatriate is opaque.
Around the beginning of this month (about 3 weeks ago), news broke that the Dutch National Bank had physically repatriated 27 metric tons of gold from the USA and Canada (exact breakdown not reported). We don't see these flows in COMEX vault reporting.
Within the last few months, several European nations have had politicians publicly call for repatriating at least part of their gold from the USA including:
Germany (still owns 1,236 metric tons in USA after repatriating 300 metric tons in 2017)
Italy (owns 1,061.5 metric tons in USA)
Spain (owns an undisclosed portion of 281 metric tons in USA)
It's not hard to imagine that the Bundesbank, Bank of Italy and/or Bank of Spain might have requested some gold repatriation without a formal requirement from their respective governments.
Suppose the Bundesbank or Bank of Italy asked for just 10% of their gold. That's more than 100 metric tons. Suppose that The Fed isn't able to deliver that gold (because the gold is encumbered or simply not there where it is supposed to be).
If the suppositions are correct, it puts a whole new light on the USA's recent custody of Venezuela's London held gold and the 4M ozt "Enhanced Delivery" enigma.