I found it interesting that in yesterday's Comex delivery report, Nova Scotia took delivery of 43 x 5000 ounces contracts, about 215,000 ounces of silver bullion, for their 'house account,' at the price of 14.08. I include that particular CME report below.
Apparently the Central Gold Trust has proposed a conversion of the Trust into an ETF, rather than accept the acquisition offer from Sprott. You may read that proposal as a PDF document.
The Sprott Funds are mildly negative in price to their NAV, which is the 'new normal' in this bear market leg in precious metals.
What is not so normal, at least in my recollection, is the deepening negative cash balance which I have estimated for Sprott Silver at a little over $430,000. And from the low level of cash in its account it looks like Sprott Gold is going to be following them soon, unless provisions are made to raise cash.
As you may recall, the Sprott underwriter Morgan Stanley gets a 4% cut on new offers of units, which has been the usual way in which Sprott has raised funds. With the premiums close to negative, they cannot execute such an offering without 'diluting' the value of the fund in that offering, which they have pledged in their prospectus that they will not do.
So it appears that selling bullion is the only way to raise the required funds. I have this from third parties, but Sprott has never said anything otherwise or objected to this interpretation.
Another interesting factor in the Sprott funds is the redeemability feature. Although it has not happened with silver, there have been a number of redemptions of gold bullion out of the Sprott gold Trust over the past couple of years. That is a good thing, that the process works, and that one might obtain their physical gold for private safekeeping.
But one might wonder what would happen if there was a 'run on physical gold' as some conjecture might occur, given the divergence in pricing between paper and physical. According to an informal source, there is no provision in the funds to block, slow down, or attempt to prevent any redemption of the gold or declare force majeure.
The counterbalance for this is, of course, the market. In order to redeem bullion, one must buy the units in the market at a certain price. And if someone started buying up the Trust units in size, the price of those units would probably adjust to an increasing positive premium which would mitigate the attractiveness of a mass redemption. And in the case of a 'run on bullion' I would imagine that holders of units would refuse to sell. But nibbling at the bullion, as it is on almost all Western gold funds, has occurred.
I include the 'Total Holdings' of the Funds and ETFs for gold below to show the decline in bullion inventory. And to pre-emptively respond to the misinformation of the bullion banks' gold trolls, who like to claim that this rise and fall in gold inventory is merely a matter of price, I include the same time periods for silver bullion as well. Nine out of ten investors might notice that silver has had a steep decline in price from its all time highs as well.
One cannot take a single data point alone, and even a cursory examination of the bullion flows globally shows a massive movement of gold bullion from West to East, with some significant declines in the 'free float' of gold in some traditionally strong Western markets, such as London for example.
And the outflows from the Asian markets into strong hands on the mainland and the Western exports to them have been absolutely astonishing. That the financial media and analysts ignore this, with some even denying it overtly, is shocking I suppose, unless you have been paying close attention to some of their more egregious service to the speculative financial interests for the last fifteen years.
By way of disclosure I own no shares in any of these Funds and ETFs at this time, and receive no money or gratuities from any of the funds which I discuss. I have owned all of them from time to time. I have owned most of the mining stocks from time to time, except for the more obscure 'juniors.' I do not prefer one over the other so much as each has its place and use in a portfolio.
As I have indicated recently I am cash heavy for the moment in my short term trading, waiting for the market to provide some additional information to prompt some action. This is normal now because I am no longer a very active trader. That is a younger man's game. I prefer to take more intermediate term positions and in size.
My long term holdings remain as they have been.
