Fed primary dealers buying platinum

JP Morgan (JPM) just took delivery of 226 fifty ounce physical bars for its "house" account, and 310 more for its alleged "customers", for a total delivery of 26,800 troy ounces, or about $40 million worth of platinum. I put quotes around the "customer" designation because many of them may actually be alter-egos for the bank, offspring hedge funds and other financial entities that are the result of an official reduction of the proprietary trading desk. ...
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What makes this month very interesting is that JP Morgan is only one of several primary dealers of the Federal Reserve which is buying large quantities of physical platinum. Other primary dealer banks are also buying and taking delivery. For example, even though one of Jefferies-Bache's (formerly Prudential-Bache) customers was the "big platinum short" this month, and delivered 41,300 ounces, Jefferies-Bache itself bought 3,550 ounces, or over $5 million worth of the stuff for its house account. Jefferies just bought the former Prudential-Bache commodities division, and it is the newest "up and coming" member of the Federal Reserve's cabal of primary dealers, and is well known as a savvy Wall Street player. The Merrill Lynch division of Bank of America (BAC) took delivery of 4,350 ounces, worth about $6.5 million for its house account. Deutsche Bank (DB) took delivery of 750 more ounces this month, after already taking 11,650 ounces in July.
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