21 January 2014

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Gold Fix, Gold Rigging


Gold fell back to test its 50 DMA in light trade today, and silver followed.

There was a little movement in and out of the Comex warehouses on Friday, but nothing of significance.

This is a holiday shortened week in the US, and trading will be even lighter than usual in the first part of this week thanks to winter storm Janus. Janus as you may recall is the two-faced Roman god of transitions, beginnings and endings. He might very well be the god of choice for politicians in the modern era as well.

I am not so enthusiastic that the discovery and investigation of the London Gold Fix, which is much talked about these days and rightly so, will result in a meaningful reform in the precious metals markets, because it is taking away all the attention from the New York futures gold rigging, a daily fixing of the gold and silver prices by a few powerful players. It certainly presents a regular pattern of hit the price in the morning, and then let it recover overnight.

February is shaping up to be an interesting month for our first active delivery month of the year.  With a record low deliverable inventory at the Comex, and potential claims running in the 100+ to 1 level, one might anticipate higher prices to bring more supply to meet demand.  But these days gold is often a synthetic trade, highly leveraged to reality at the extremes and beyond, and that makes the market open to significant volatility, and a possible dislocation to the upside.

Have a pleasant evening.