The accumulation trends seem rather steady despite the recent volatility in price and protracted sawtooth downtrend.
I have included GLD and SLV in case the futures calculations had induced some distortions.
On the last chart I include the Chalkin Money Flows for GLD which are remarkably positive except for the year end selling we saw at the end of 2011.
Someone had mentioned this phenomenon to me earlier today, but I did not think about it until I read Harvey Organ's futures analysis in which he noted his surprise that in the recent price smackdown's the Open Interest of gold and silver were steady or even went UP.
That seems to imply short selling into demand, rather than long liquidation as the cause of the price declines. From this evening's commentary by Harvey:
"The total gold comex open interest baffled everyone as instead of falling badly surprisingly it rose by 3906 contracts. The raid orchestrated by the bankers somehow did not cause any gold leaves to fall from the gold tree. The May delivery month surprisingly saw its OI rise from 64 contracts to 173. How on earth will the regulators explain this as we witnessed no liquidation of metal of any kind in a huge price downfall and yet more stood for delivery?
...The total OI for silver was even more baffling to our bankers. With silver falling on its sword to finish in the low 29's one would have thought that many silver longs would throw in the towel. Nope!! The total OI actually rose by 1410 contractions from 112,139 to 113,549. Both Ted Butler and I agree that some strong entity is after physical silver. There is no other explanation for this. The front delivery month of May also shocked our bankers. The OI actually rose by 3 contracts (from 406 to 409 contracts) despite the huge downfall in the silver price. Nobody liquidated. I wish the regulators can explain this phenomena to us."
