COMEX deliveries and registered gold (silver too)

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pmbug

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I have been reading Harvey Organ's blog for a good while now and have been amazed at the delivery notices that are being executed lately - especially for gold.

However, I don't understand how the delivery notices are being fulfulled because there is almost no movement of bullion from (or to for that matter) the "registered" account.

Can anyone out there explain how this is supposed to work?
 
The COMEX has been settling many large requests for delivery by paying MASSIVE cash premiums.

They don't have the metal to satisfy a lot of delivery demand - they've been paying out in cash, often in EXTREMELY large payments that HUGELY outweight the current spot price of the metal being called upon.

That scheme will only last so long.



 
Harvey usually attributes any shortfall in the difference between open interest (OI) and deliveries as being contracts that were settled for cash.

Ie. if the OI fell by 25 contacts and there were only 15 deliveries, 10 contacts were settled for cash.

But what's been happening lately - with gold at least - is the opposite. Deliveries have been exceeding any changes in OI. That indicates that there are no cash settlements and in fact more contracts are seeing redemptions as the month goes on.

I read JS Kim's analysis indicating that contracts were being settled for paper swaps in the form of EFP (Exchange of Futures for Physical) and EFS (Exchange of Futures for Swaps), but it's still not clear to me if he is referring to the contracts that Harvey says are cash settled, or if he means that the contracts the COMEX identifies as deliveries are essentially receiving ETF shares.

You'd think if it were the latter that we might see more redemptions of bullion out of the ETF (GLD) vaults.
 
I found this with a little bit of digging:
http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2010/09/sept-72010-commentary.html

So it appears that the delivery notices that are being reported should indeed have a direct relationship to movements in and out of the COMEX registered/dealer inventory. Very strange that there is almost zero reported movements of physical metal in this category in spite of numerous delivery notices being reported.
 
@ Seraphim above

I have read vague things about COMEX settling PM trades with CASH at very high premiums (Jim Willie CB, one of the most growlingest bears around), but NO ONE has shown any evidence of that.

IS there anything real about big CASH premiums vs. taking the physical? It seems kind of hard for me to believe that. Someone receiving such money, "free", could then go out and roll it over and over. Or take the premium and BUY some physical metal.

This might be a good question for FOFOA...
 
DoChen,
I think they are doing exactly that.
Rolling the cash prems over into new contracts.
I have heard reports of 25% cash prems being paid, for customers to NOT take delivery of product.(because COMEX doesn't have it).
Great way to make out like a bandit.
 
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If I had the steam, I would be doing the 25% per delivery month roll myself. I find it hard to believe there would not be some sort of "cant buy back in for six months" caveat on a deal like that. Either they're paying a premium in cash, or giving the premium in extra shares of SLV. Sooner or later, this strategy is going to fail.
 
Last night, Harvey posed the question:
With no activity at the gold comex can someone at the CFTC explain how contracts are settled?

http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2011/12/bourses-around-world-fallgold-and.html

It's the same question I posed to Harvey back in October.

I sent the following email to CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton just now:
 
It´s highly improbable that it were all cash settlements.
This only would make sense if a paper gold etf like GLD redeemed shares.
The whole inventory data is very suspicious anyway :doodoo:
 

http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2011/12/extremely-important-more-fallout-on-re_6521.html

 
Bring on the gold rush. Dump it all I say. That just allows us silver bugs pick up more discount metal. MF Global fucked it all up for the banksters, and now, if the MF clients are not made 100% whole, and given some additional punitive recovery, the paper markets will all go the way of the dinosaur.

That my friends, is when gold and silver find their true price. If the only gold and silver to be had is physiccal, the price will simply adjust to represent true demand. Good times!
 
Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass talking about the fractional reserve regime of the COMEX, starting at 41:50
 


http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2011/12/japan-in-serious-debt-problemssearsltro_3122.html

Between this magical loss of ~360,000 ozt of gold and the magical appearance of 1.2MM ozt of silver a couple of days ago, it seems pretty clear that COMEX vault info isn't worth the (electronic) paper it's printed on.
 
Thanks for posting the Kyle Bass video. I have sent it to everyone with half a brain in my address book. Lets hope someone watches it.
 
Eventually, this fractional reserve + fraudulent accounting scam will blow up in the faces of the bullion banks
The ETF (GLD, SLV) holders will get killed as well.

I wonder if someone at GATA has an interest in taking the CME to court over their accounting. Might be worth a suggestion to them.
If you hold gold/silver futures, you might be able to file a lawsuit demand an independent audit. I haven´t researched it, but it might be worth to think about that.
Kyle Bass talks about his independent audit in the video posted above, seems like he had to fight over his right to get an audit aswell.
 
An anonymous author ("Fred") posted a comment in Harvey Organ's blog answering my question on the delivery process:
http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/201...howComment=1346254465021#c6511247899523823176
 
What a fucked up, convoluted process. Why the hell don't they just say it that way in the first damn place??
 
From the comments on last night's post
pmbug said:
Fred,

Thank you for your comment to my question in yesterday's post.

If I understood you correctly, it would seem that the COMEX should be moving metal from ELIGIBLE to REGISTERED to satisfy new delivery receipts. Is this correct?



Fred said:
To pmbug--

That's certainly possible. There were enough receipts in existence and enough sellers of those receipts that more metal was not needed. Old buyers selling to new buyers.
 
COMEX registered gold inventory is down to levels not seen since late 2011 at 2.29 moz. Another confirmation that there is ultra strong demand for physical!



It has broken below the long term trend line at 2.4 moz which can be seen here in this interactive chart:

http://www.24hgold.com/english/inte...e=COMEX WAREHOUSES REGISTERED&etfcodecom=GOLD

The picture for silver is entirely different. Registered inventory is at 40.4 moz, nowhere near any lows. However, any COMEX data should be taken with a grain of salt:


Longterm interactive chart for silver inventories:
http://www.24hgold.com/english/inte...COMEX WAREHOUSES REGISTERED&etfcodecom=SILVER

Looks like the inventory downdrift stopped after May 2011...
 
Haha.. May 2011 will live in infamy.
 
There is still a bit of time for these numbers to change, but ...


http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2013/03/cyprus-gets-hosedgold-deliveries-for.html
 
http://bullmarketthinking.com/comex-gold-inventories-collapse-by-largest-amount-on-record/

Meanwhile Tekoa da Silva's website has been under DDoS attack all day...
http://bullmarketthinking.com/the-s...ashing-today-please-pardon-the-interruptions/
 
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NOTHING TO SEE HERE

http://bullmarketthinking.com/the-s...ashing-today-please-pardon-the-interruptions/
 
seeing that no one wants the barborous relic any more, they are pulverising it and dumping it in the sea, off Alaska, rebalancing supply/demand and creating lots of new jobs, in one perfect move .........

Just gotta be careful to ensure they only dump it at a rate that keeps it around $1600 an ounce.
 
The Brotherhood of Darkness doesn't like that this info is being disseminated. Soon, all sites [such as this] will experience denial of service attacks as the gold/silver situation becomes more and more unmanageable. The truth will eventually be on the street either way. The Dark Princes are backing up their trucks as I type......
 
SD reporting that COMEX silver is also disappearing:
More: http://silverdoctors.com/nearly-20-of-cnt-silver-inventories-withdrawn-from-comex-vaults-monday/
 
It maybe isn't a coincidence that gold inventories at the COMEX have been dropping so fast when at the same time GLD inventories were dropping like mad. If this is the reason, then the GLD inventory is COMEX futures contracts which would be a major scandal.
 
I checked Harvey's latest report. Looks like (as much as you can trust the COMEX reports anyway) the 7-9 standard deviation crash has stopped the draining of COMEX vault inventories:

Gold:
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory in oz nil
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory in oz nil
Deposits to the Dealer Inventory in oz nil
Deposits to the Customer Inventory, in oz 94.45 (Brinks)

Silver:
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory nil
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory 914,919.66 oz (Brinks,CNT,)
Deposits to the Dealer Inventory nil
Deposits to the Customer Inventory 1,543,323.695 (Brinks,CNT, HSBC)
 
dumb question -

why would a large drop in pm prices slow or stop the draining of COMEX vault inventory ?

I got the idea that paper traders were dumping but everyone else was discretely trying to buy metal ..........

I probably need to read up all over again how the paper markets work )-:
 
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