
Today (10-17) in silver
Today saw silver spot fall as the CME raised margins 8.5%. Let's investigate what played out below the surface...
PSLV
Today PSLV added zero units to the trust and 242 ozt to the vault (which is likely just a correction to yesterday's inflow). PSLV has been very active of late, but took a rest day today. Every 1,000 ozt of silver that PSLV adds to their vaults is a London Good Delivery silver bar that is not available to the COMEX or LBMA to settle contracts.
COMEX
COMEX silver stock report for Thursday (COMEX reports activity for the previous working day) showed 295K ozt (~9.2 metric tons) withdrawn from the Asahi vaults, and ~2.7M ozt (~84.1 metric tons) withdrawn overall. Unlike Wednesday, there were no deposits today. For the first time in many days, Asahi had no silver move from registered to eligible. I singled out the action in the Asahi vault because they are listed by the LBMA as a Good Delivery Refinery for silver and I assume that means they can deliver silver back to London with fewer logistical challenges (red tape, costs, etc.) than other actors.
JPM saw 367.1K ozt (~11.4 metric tons) withdrawn and, like Asahi, no silver moved from registered to eligible. This ends the three day inactive streak. JPM is the custodian for Blackrock's SLV and manages changes to SLV inventory in their London (LBMA) vault. I assume that JPM also can deliver silver back to London with fewer logistical challenges (red tape, costs, etc.) than other actors.
Overall, 753.6K ozt (~23.4 metric tons) of silver was moved from registered to eligible on Thursday. It seems the COMEX is not quite done shedding vault stock.
SLV
My "canary in the silver mine" came back from the dead. Today JPM reported adding 2.4M ozt (74.8 metric tons) to the silver stock while Blackrock reported adding 2.65M shares.
Even though the number of shares available to borrow was plentiful most of the day, the borrowing fee spiked to a high of 20.79%! It has remained near 20% since. The spread between the rebate fee (what brokers pay shareholders to borrow shares) and the borrow fee (what brokers charge to lend shares) has remained steady at 4.1%.
SFE/SGE
The Oct 17 trading report from this morning indicated the SGE/SFE prices for silver moving up with, but still lagging (at a discount to) the LBMA/COMEX. The SFE silver vault continues to bleed out inventory - shedding another 2M ozt (~62.1 metric tons) today. China is going to need to bid silver up higher if they want silver to flow in from the West.