CME Raises Margin Requirements on Gold and Treasuries and Energy and Swiss Francs

...and Pesos, Rubles, etc. etc.

CME Boosts Margins - CME Site Bulletin

WSJ - CME Boosts Margins on Forex, Treasuries

Ok gold I understand, kind of. I just wondered if CME was going to raise margins and signal a bear raid in my gold chart commentary this afternoon.

But Treasuries?

Why be subtle? Why not just machine gun the lifeboats?

Git some. Git some. Get back in them big caps, tech, and bank stocks you wussies.

I wonder if this applies to Shanghai's SME and London's LBMA. lol.

h/t to Lee at Wall Street Examiner for the heads up.

Silver Dealer Inventory Continues to Spiral to New Lows at the Comex - Pax Goldmana

The deliverable dealer silver inventory at the Comex dropped to another new low of 27.37 million ounces.

If the Comex runs into troubles with a temporary inability to deliver on contracts and approaches a de facto default, most of the regulators and pundits will say they 'never saw it coming.'

Well, here it is.

Hard to miss an almost 70% drop in deliverable inventory like this in a little over two years.

UBS remarked today that they see a choke on the supply in gold, but not in other  metals. 

Yes, there is plenty of silver available, but at higher prices.  How high, only the market can tell.

At some point, even if it is for a brief period of time, silver bullion may not be available at any price, at least in dollars.

Just another day in the Pax Goldmana. "They create a desert, and call it recovery."

Reminder: Gold and Silver Option Expiration for May Is Next Tuesday

As a reminder, the Comex will have their gold and silver option expiration on Tuesday, April 26.

Due to a lax regulation of the markets by the CFTC, there are sometimes major price manipulation shenanigans associated with these events, and these sometimes during thinly traded periods of time.

Someone sent me this article. It makes a point about the calendar holidays which I had not noticed. Here is their follow up aricle.

Since much of the physical buying comes out of Asia, and most of the price manipulation seems to originate in London and New York, this could be interesting. Although the setup is there for a thin trade, it takes a look at the composition of the markets, and the actual details of the options and contracts held in balance to other things, in order to make any judgements.

I do know that quite a few specs are jiggy with their recent gains in silver. This makes a retracement possible if someone 'gets the ball rolling' as they say. On the other hand, I have seen fellows use option expiration to breakout metals and other instruments and beat the shorts mercilessly. It is hard to trade this sort of event reliably if one is not an insider.

I stopped trading on the Comex a few years ago, before I scaled back my general trading, out of sense of discouragement in the integrity of their markets. But it is hard to get away from it, since their trades feed into and affect so many other instruments like ETFs, etc. When one take a position in a short ETF like ZSL, for example, one is trading with the Comex by proxy I would imagine.

While I do not believe in 'hanging bankers' at all, I think some serious investigations, indictments, and prison terms for the guilty white collar criminals would do a great deal to stimulate the real economy by reining in the excessive fee-based taxes from the financial sector, and refreshing the price discovery and efficiency of the markets.

But the Obama Administration is reform adverse, especially while collecting its famous billion dollar campaign slush fund. You don't get that kind of money from the "Yes We Can" crowd. And most Republicans are unashamedly servants of the pigmen.

Here is a nice, concise analysis of the Obama Administration's policy from an interview with William K. Black:

Ryssdal: What about the argument, though, that the financial system is so fragile still, and these cases so complicated, that we can’t really tear things apart with substantive investigations and prosecutions because it will all fall apart again?

Black: Yeah, that’s an excellent point. We should leave felons in charge of our largest financial institutions as a means of achieving financial stability.

Ryssdal: See, that’s funny because I was expecting you to come back with — I don’t know, JPMorgan earned $5 billion last quarter. How shaky can they be?

I am now flat in my trading account, and am not sure about putting on trades for the holiday weekend.

Dwindling Comex Silver Bullion, But Where Is the Gold Coming From?

Special thanks to 24hourgold. This interactive chart can be viewed here.

I wonder how much of this silver being sold is leased out from unallocated accounts and holdings in ETFs.

How unfortunate for the silver shorts that the bankers lack a ready supply of bullion from the central banks.  Most national stores of silver in the west have already been depleted.

Gold bullion, however, is still available from those central banks who lease their gold to the bullion banks, where it is then sold into the private market, and is afterward carried on the national accounts as bookkeeping entries. 

This scheme has been promoted by some of the TBTF banks for many years as a means of providing a steady income for the central bankers and their Treasuries on their 'idle resources.'  Lease us your gold, and we will pay you a percent or two for it in paper.

What Mubarak and other dictators in history past have done using cargo planes, trucks and trains, the western bankers may have done over a period of time using computer entries and their cronies in the central banks: plundering the national treasuries of Europe, quietly and over time. And it was not stored in salt mines and lake bottoms, but sold in plain sight.

Won't the people be surprised if they find how much of their gold is gone, and how it was used to deceive them while their other assets were stolen using phony paper. Do you think there will be reparations made, and justice done?

They will most likely try to ignore it and dismiss it, claim that it is not needed and we are better off without it. And then they will buy it back, but at what prices? And what so called patriots will be their willing stooges and accomplices in theft, again.

Watch how they weave their arguments over the misappropriated social trust funds and pensions, bank bailouts, and subsidies to the corporations and monied interests to see what their methods will be. This debt is sovereign, a matter of national interest if not sacred honor, and so must be paid whatever the cost. But that debt to those people, well, the money is gone, so too bad for them. Sacrifices must be made, and we will choose who makes them based not on the law or justice, but on the principles of crony capitalism, which are always for private benefit of the few.

What a scandal! And irony indeed if this banking fraud is exposed not by the virtuous West, but by China and the BRICs, and their unwillingness to go along with the scheme.

But this could not be true.  Banks do not do this.  It would be like their presenting forged documents, concealing evidence, and committing blatant perjury to take people's homes in their very own courts!

But this is merely rhetorical speculation and conspiracy theory of course, because the theft could never pass undisclosed with all the independent audits, transparency, oversight, and accountability in the central banking system.  Surely the people have a good account of the amount, number, and quality of every bar that they own from an impeccable source which they control.  Uh, there have been no such audits or accountability, the system is necessarily opaque? Oh.  We are shocked, shocked, that the gold is gone and the private banks cannot replace it.  The smartest minds told us it was a good plan, an excellent idea.  The US pressured us to do it to support the dollar.  How could we have known that people would demand these barbarous relics again.  Do they not understand monetary theory? They are to be ridiculed1

And now all that is left is running the bluff, and playing for time, looking for an opportunity to deflect the issue to something, someone else. 

Registered Silver Ounces Available For Delivery at the Comex: The Emperor's Errant Knavery

Here is a chart of registered silver ounces available for delivery in the Comex warehouse. Nine out of ten Americans may notice a trend.

If it seems somewhat counter-intuitive that the available supply continuously declines even as the price soars, you may begin to obtain some sense of the true nature of the management, regulation, and character of this market.

Comex has two categories of silver in its warehouse.

The eligible category merely means that the silver is in a condition to conform to the standards of delivery. Size and quality of the bar in other words. It is being stored at the Comex warehouse, but is not offered for delivery into contracts.

Registered means that the silver is available for delivery to those who demand bullion.

Eligible silver can become registered and deliverable if the owner of the silver declares it saleable at some price. And of course if it is there, and otherwise unemcumbered by senior obligations or conspicuous absence. There are a little over 60 million ounces of eligible silver being stored by customers at the Comex, in addition to the registered dealer inventory.

The registered inventory of silver at the Comex, 42 million ounces, is worth about 1.34 billion dollars at today's prices.

The entire silver inventory at the Comex warehouse, roughly one hundred million ounces of silver, is worth about 3.2 billion dollars at today's prices.

There are some rules passed a few years ago, delivery limits sanctioned by the CFTC, that prevent a large entity from taking too much physical bullion in a single month, and enforcing a paper settlement. I think that is why the inventory is undergoing a slow but very steady drain.

In other words, THEY can SELL as much as they wish, but YOU can only TAKE as much as they allow you to take at the current prices. That might sound like a con by any other name, but it is certainly no definition of market pricing of a physical commodity when you can sell what you wish at whatever prices you set, but then refuse delivery at those prices.

When and if this market leverage breaks, the silver on the periphery, the non-eligible supply of smaller bars and coins, is going to evaporate given the large amount of leverage in the unallocated silver bullion that people believe that they own, and the realization that the confidence which investors have had in the integrity of US markets has been abused. The silver on the periphery is a relative drop in the bucket compared to the growing demand from millions of buyers, however relatively smaller than the bullion banks which each individual buyer may be.

Full Text of CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton's Statement on Market Manipulation

Has the US financial media mentioned or even discussed this? Today the Bloomberg television news people are busy discussing the World Wrestling Federation, a caricature of sport analagous to the Comex and NYSE as financial markets.

Statement of Commissioner Bart Chilton
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Public Hearing on Anti-Manipulation and Disruptive Trading Practices
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010

I take this opportunity to comment on the precious metals markets and in particular the silver markets.

More than two years ago the agency began an investigation into silver markets. I have been urging the agency to say something on the matter for months. The public deserves some answers to their concerns that silver markets are being, and have been, manipulated.

The legal definition of manipulation under the law is a high bar to prove. It is a much different test than what the average person might consider as manipulation. Under existing law, to prove manipulation, the government is required to demonstrate not only specific intent; we also need to prove that as a result of the intent and market control, that activity caused an artificial price -- a point that can certainly be debated by economists.

Attempted manipulation is less difficult to prove -- requiring an intent to manipulate and some overt act in furtherance of that intent. There are also other violations of law that could contort markets and distort prices.

I believe that there have been repeated attempts to influence prices in the silver markets. There have been fraudulent efforts to persuade and deviously control that price. Based on what I have been told by members of the public and reviewed in publicly available documents, I believe violations to the Commodity Exchange Act have taken place in silver markets and that any such violation of the law in this regard should be prosecuted.

In saying this, I am fully aware of the prohibition from divulging trader names or information about their positions I am extremely careful not to violate the law in this, or any, regard. I also cannot pre-judge anything the agency may do with regard to our silver investigation, or any other matter.

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which I strongly supported, contains new manipulation provisions as well as anti-disruptive trading rules. These new authorities, along with the implementation of thoughtful position limits in metals, will go a long way toward ensuring more efficient and effective metals markets devoid of fraud, abuse, and manipulation.

Thoughtful investigations take time. The CFTC staff has worked extremely hard on the silver investigation. That said, there is a point at which it is our responsibility to say something. Within the law, I have done so. I am hopeful that the agency will speak publicly about the investigation in the very near future and when they do so that it will be in a more granular fashion than I am permitted from doing at this time.

Gold And Energy Futures Contracts to Begin Trading in Singapore

A little competition is just what the COMEX and LBMA need.

Wouldn't it be sweet if some master-of-the-universe trader caught rigging the markets and violating the rules were to find himself on the receiving end of an old-fashioned caning?

Let's see how the arbitrage develops, because you know it will. I wonder how transparent and liquid this exchange will be. It is certainly in an advantageous location.

Bloomberg
Singapore Mercantile Exchange to Start Gold, Energy Futures Trade Aug. 31
By Christian Schmollinger
Aug 17, 2010

Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX) will begin live trading operations on Aug. 31, offering both gold and energy contracts, according to an e-mailed statement.

The exchange will offer futures for gold physically delivered in the island city-state, Brent oil denominated in euros and financially settled West Texas Intermediate crude, the statement said. The bourse also plans euro-dollar futures.

“SMX’s launch is a step in the right direction as we leverage off Singapore’s unique position as a premier financial and commercial hub in the region,” Thomas McMahon, the exchange’s chief executive officer, said in the statement. “The launch will provide market players in Asia the flexibility to trade products generic to regional trade flows within the Asian business day.”

The Singapore Mercantile Exchange is backed by Financial Technologies (India) Ltd., which operates the largest commodity bourse in India. Other commodity exchanges in Asia include Singapore Commodity Exchange and projects in China, Tokyo and Dubai.

Gold Daily Chart: Cup and Handle Formation on Track

Gold set its low for the handle with an intraday spike down to 1166 compliments of the heavy handed bear raids ahead of option expiry, but put in the daily close at an almost perfect 38.2% Fibonacci retracement.

Since then gold has been rallying, breaking through the key 1200 level right after the expiration where so many call options had been concentrated.


h/t lemetropolecafe.com

It has already reached what might prove to be the upper bound of resistance for the handle, although I would expect it to be a rough go higher from here until a breakout is achieved.

The target of 1400 to 1450 looks good. As the breakout gains shape hopefully a minimum measuring objective can be calibrated more precisely.

Once gold starts moving I would not be surprised to see a breakaway gap that does not get filled, but leaves many punters on the sidelines waiting for a pullback.



The usual caution is that if there is a market crash and a liquidation panic, gold will be sold along with almost everything else, at least temporarily, but then should rebound strongly as the central banks act to bolster confidence and liquidity by devaluing their currencies even more aggressively tha they have already been doing.

Classic Cup and Handle Chart Formation



See also Gold Is In a Classic Cup and Handle Formation Targeting 1,450: May 19th

Silver S Q U _ _ Z _ : Would You Like to Buy a Vowel?

"Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution
of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society."

Dr. Samuel Johnson

Another vertical move in silver from the New York open, as the bullion bears who are heavily short silver attempt to cover their paper shorts, which is a trick considering how tight the physical market is, and how vulnerable they are to discovery now that their attempt to suppress the price is falling apart.

It is like watching the Hunt Brothers silver gambit in reverse. As you might suspect, this is not the kind of action one sees in healthy markets. These volatile price swings are unnerving to most investors, and to the industries who rely on the markets to set prices for their planning in the real economy.

If you like your markets opaque, imbalanced, and dangerous, the NYMEX is your Bartertown.

If this turns into a serious short panic the price of silver could reach its all time high. Markets that are allowed to become this out of sync with legitimate price discovery are inefficient and disruptive to the real economy.

But now we will see if the bullion banks who have sowed the wind, reap the whirlwind.

But for now, the Administration is failing to reform the markets, as seen by the SEC's latest attempt to deal with a sudden 1,000 point drop in the Dow. It is almost funny to hear the Wall Street squeaktoys explaining that one away on bubblevision.

The Banks must be restrained, the financial system reformed, the economy brought back into balance, before there can be any sustained recovery.

Guess Who Is Taking Delivery of 1.7 Tonnes of Gold from the Comex

"Never be surprised at the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton.”

John Emerich Lord Acton

Its delivery time for the May Gold contract on the Comex, and the statistics yesterday showed some interesting buying.

Bank of Nova Scotia 'stopped' 699 big contracts, and issued 100 contracts, for a net takedown of roughly 1.7 tons of gold, the bulk of which was supplied by J.P. Morgan.

As you may recall, the Canadian bullion bank Scotia Mocatta is a subsidiary of Bank of Nova Scotia. Socita Mocatta was recently involved in a bit of a scandal when some investors went to visit 'the vault where their gold was stored' and found it to be surprisingly, perhaps shockingly, undersupplied.

Is BNS acting to back up their paper, or are large investors asking for their bullion in advance? Either way, its an act of good faith on the part of BNS to take the delivery, and probably very smart to do it now.

While cash settlement may be an option, it is not ethical, and BNS is known for its high ethical standards towards its customers, unlike some of its more famous American cousins in the gangs of New York.

Nothing to see here, move along. Its all perfectly normal. No one really has to have what they sell and store for you anymore. Unless they are honest.

h/t Denver Dave

Whistleblower to CFTC in JPM Silver Manipulation Struck by Hit and Run Car In London

I am glad that although Mr. Maguire and his wife are shaken they will apparently be all right.

The related story on his allegations regarding manipulation in the silver market is here.

It appears they have 'the perp in hand' as the say. This should provide some light. I am prepared to accept this as an accident, of course, but it is one hell of a coincidence if so. It could also be the act of some trader who had a bit too much to drink, and a grudge to bear after the testimony the day before. Or something else altogether.

I hesitate to say anything more at this point, except curiouser and curiouser.

As reported by Adrian Douglas, the Director of GATA who has been the contact for Mr. Andrew T. Maguire, and on the GATA website

"On March 25th at the CFTC Public Hearing on Precious Metals GATA made a dramatic revelation of a whistleblower source, Andrew Maguire, who has first hand evidence of gold and silver market manipulation by JPMorganChase, and who had tipped off the CFTC in advance of manipulation in gold and silver some months ago.

On March 26th while out shopping with his wife in the London area, Mr. Maguire's car was hit by a car careening out of a side road. The driver of the vehicle then tried to escape.

When a pedestrian eye-witness attempted to block the driver's escape he accelerated at him and would have hit him had the pedestrian not jumped out of the way. The car then hit two other cars in escaping. The driver was apprehended by the police after police helicopters were used in a high speed chase.

Andrew and his wife were hospitalized with minor injuries. They were discharged from hospital today and should make a full recovery."

Comex Acts to Curb Speculation (in Gold)

Did J. P. Morgan send up a flare as their short positions were taking on water and listing?

"As a heads up, Gold often gets hit with a bear raid on FOMC day. Since the
miners were hit a bit today with possible front-running that might be a good
bet. Who can say in these thin markets?"
Is the US Financial Crisis Over? 1:49 PM

And After the Bell...

"The COMEX gold margin requirement is going up overnight. New levels are $5403 initial per contract (the old one was $4500), and $4002 maintenance."

Change you can believe in. Vox pecuniae and all that. LOL Why raise the margin requirments now after a ten percent correction?

The bullion banks (the bears) are edgy because the buying has been particularly robust in the physical metal at this price level, especially the further one gets from New York. Open interest in the futures has been remarkably resilient, showing very little long liquidation. A failure of the commercials is never a pretty sight.

Let's see if the Wall Street Banks can hold their ground and keep shorting into the demand from overseas.

Gold, the Comex and Exchange For Physical

This report below comes from John Cheney of Service Analytics.

We would not conclude that you cannot get gold from the Comex in the exercise of your futures contract. "Cash settled" is nothing new, and we ourselves have done this in the past. But we have been speaking with other traders and funds, and some are spotting a trend.

Comex is putting forward the offer of paper in the form of money or ETF positions aggressively, and it is the much easier alternative. Delivery of physical gold from the Comex is no longer as straightforward or even as semi-convenient as it had been in the past. In fact, it is difficult, and one must be persistent and wait long periods of time. At least, this is what we hear.

We would like to know if there has been a recent independent audit of the Comex stores, with a clean sheet of bar numbers and the status of same. From what we hear it is a mess, as bad or worse as the recent scandal in Canada and the 'missing bullion.'

"Some months ago a chap described changes in the comex rules for futures contract deliveries. Therein it was described that the EFP, exchange for physical, rules were amended to allow for delivery of GLD shares in lieu of bullion.

Well take a look at something new, at least for me, in Monday’s comex preliminary volume and open interest report. On page 3 of the attachment, notice that in addition to futures contracts listed under the EFP category, a new category is listed: “Delivery Cash Settled” = 2866 december gold contracts. Just so happens 2866 was exactly the number of delivery notices issued on FND as reported in the Nov 27 vol and op int report.

Conclusion: guess you can no longer get bullion via using comex contracts. This apparently is the next step in the evolution of gold trading."

The conclusion we reach for now is that if one is counting on the ability to receive delivery of physical gold from the Comex for whatever purposes, then don’t. You will wait and fight and stand in queue to obtain the goods from the Enron nation.

But one principle we have learned over the years is never to attribute to bad intents what can be attributed to human error and mismanagement.

Paper, Scissors, Gold

As you may have heard recently, the Comex has asserted their right under their rules to deliver the equivalent paper interest in Exchange Traded Funds such as GLD in lieu of the delivery of physical bullion for those standing for delivery under the rules of the commodity exchange.

Is GLD really the same as physical bullion?

"...it appears that a lot of investors believe and trust that investing in GLD is the same thing as buying physical gold bullion. A close reading and analysis of the GLD Prospectus, however, reveals that investing in GLD is drastically different from owning gold. This analysis will show why GLD is nothing more than another form of a derivative security which is loaded with counter-party default risk."
Owning GLD Can Be Hazardous to Your Wealth

Here is a recent statement from Dennis Gartman who most often derides those he calls 'goldbugs.'

"To finish, we do agree that recent decisions to allow for the "delivery" of ETF shares in the stead of actual physical gold against a futures position does cause us some concern. Indeed, it causes us some very real concern, for if we stand for delivery of wheat we expect to receive wheat, not paper. The same holds true for delivery processes on the COMEX, and if GATA and the "Bugs" have a complaint it is this new decision by the COMEX. On this, we’ll grant that the "Bugs" have something to complain about." Dennis Gartman in The Gartman Letter

We have often said that when the real crisis of liquidity comes, and the final flight to safety from the credit bubble collapse begins in earnest, the exchanges will alter the rules to allow for cash and paper settlement of claims for bullion, which they cannot or will not be able to deliver at the agreed upon prices.

This is what makes the current structure of the short positions held by a few banks on the precious metals exchanges a 'racket,' a type of Ponzi scheme where the same thing is sold repeatedly with no means of satisfying the aggregate of the claims and ownership.

We are sure the Comex is "well capitalized," and will continue to be so, even as it is rocked by de facto delivery failures and the substitution of more paper to back up the general failure of paper.

The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine.

When the Incoming Tide Turns to Tsunami

Not a matter of if, but when.

The Times
Gold price could treble if China divests dollars, warns mining boss
Jenny Booth
January 29, 2009

The gold price is likely to hit record highs in dollar terms as fears grow about the stability of the US currency, the chairman of Barrick Gold said today at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

The founder of the world’s largest goldmining company said that there was even a possibility that central banks, including China’s, might start to switch from dollar holdings to gold, which could cause the price of the metal to treble.

“Gold is at record levels in every currency except dollars," Peter Munk told Reuters at the WEF meeting.

"Even within dollar terms it is within a few percentage points of an all-time high, at a time when all the other major commodities are falling.”

Mr Munk said: “Whether it’s the currency effect or a reaction to a feeling of uncertainty, gold, in my opinion, is more likely to go up than down.”

The gold price was up today, trading at about $890 at 1500GM. At present the record high is $1,030.80 an ounce, achieved in March last year.

Mr Munk emphasised that he was merely weighing the odds.

“It would be stupid to assume commodities prices can only go one way,” he said, adding that physical demand for gold jewellery was not high during the economic downturn.

Gold has been one of the best-performing assets of recent months, rising in value by nearly 17 per cent since late October even as the price of other commodities, such as oil and copper, has dropped sharply. (This is because gold is more monetary than commodity. Silver is a more even mix but it is still monetary as well as industrial. - Jesse)

Investors have bought heavily into physical bullion in the form of coins and bars, and physically backed assets, such as exchange-traded funds, as a safe store of value at a time of increased volatility in other asset prices.

Mr Munk said that downward pressure on the dollar, partly due to massive US spending and printing money to stimulate the economy, would increase gold’s attractions as an investment even further.

Gold usually moves in the opposite direction to the dollar, as it is often bought as a hedge against weakness in the US currency. (Gold has been moving with the dollar as foreigner flee out of other currencies and begin to treat gold as a safe haven alternative with, not in lieu of, the dollar - Jesse)

“My personal feeling is that with the rescue packages calling for trillions, not billions ... the value of the [US] currency has to go down,” Mr Munk said.

He said that there was a possibility that central banks, including that of China, a major dollar asset holder, might start buying gold. (Rumour is that the physical market is so tight they have been calling quietly around looking to lock in major sources of supply - Jesse)

“If they decide to diversify, we assume into gold, then we start to talk about a trebling or quadrupling of the gold price," he said. "It could be followed by Russia or Kuwait." (They could just be jawboning Tim Geithner back with a credible threat as well - Jesse)

“I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s more likely. I would not have said it two years ago — I’m not a gold bug — but it’s more likely than it was two years ago.”

He added that his company did not now hedge its output — meaning use derivatives to insure against a fall in price — and relied on the price climbing.

In the past its successful hedging allowed it to make key acquisitions.

“It would be dumb to hedge,” Mr Munk said. (Bill Murphy told you that when gold was at $300 per ounce, and he was right - Jesse)

Is the Comex Doing Fractional Reserve Delivery of Gold?

An acquaintance who works for a small precious metals fund sent this to us today, asking if we had ever heard of anything like it.

The short answer is no, but this is not a strong area of specific expertise and recent experience for us, and we never attribute to a bad intent what we can attribute to sheer incompetency, especially when dealing with large organizations.

But when one is promised specific bars with specific serial numbers of a specific size and weight one week, and they are not available the next week when you confirm that you wish to receive them, that brings up the same kind of red flags that have been so notoriously ignored by regulatory agencies in other recent cases. Of course the Comex is no Bernie Madoff.

It does bring into question the integrity of the Comex records and their contracts, and the condition of their audits and inventories. We would have a fit if someone did this to us after an online auction or a personal purchase transaction. Why should the Comex be allowed to sell what it does not have, and then dictate new terms after the fact? Especially when this same customer had been routinely taking delivery off emini contracts from Comex before this.

And it does put a fresh emphasis on the old adage, "When in doubt, take it out."

We accumulated 3 emini gold contracts on CBOT for December delivery and we had been given serial numbers and weights last week for the 3 bars we were to receive.

Today we are informed that Comex is invoking a rule in which they can deny delivery of individual mini bars (roughly 33 ounces) and issue you only a Warehouse Delivery Receipt (WDR) against your mini-contract unless you have 3 WDR's, and then they'll issue you a 100 oz. bar.

Otherwise, if you have only 1 or 2 mini-contracts, you only own a WDR, which you sell by shorting a mini against it. If you own a WDR for a 100 oz., they encourage you to safekeep the gold at the Comex and hold a vault receipt.

CLEARLY, the Comex has run out of the bars that were being delivered to holders of emini contracts. Our back-office guy told us that he's been doing Comex deliveries for 30 years and he's never seen anything like this, and he's never heard of this rule on the mini contract. (update: its in the contract if you read it - Jesse)
Fortunately we have 3 WDR's and we will be getting delivery of a 100 oz. Comex gold bar.

But this whole episode brings into the question the validity of the Comex gold inventory. More importantly, the Comex is now going to issue WDR's, which are paper.

Are they becoming a "fractional" reserve depository, where they can issue several WDR's against the same bar of gold, knowing that some of those people will opt to keep storage on Comex and never require actual physical delivery?"

JP Morgan's Forecast of Commodity Price Changes From Index Rebalancing

You may click on the link as usual for the full story and a detailed breakdown of the analysis.

In summary JP Morgan's forecast of the commodity index rebalancing which will done around January 8-9th is:

...we expect the rebalancing to have the greatest impact in gold, COMEX copper, crude oil, gold, and live cattle. We estimate that the rebalancing of the two indices is expected to result in $877 million of selling in gold, $699 million of buying in COMEX copper, $528 million of selling in live cattle, and $523 million of buying in crude oil.

We would expect the impact of the index rebalancing to be felt this week because of 'frontrunning' of the index changes by the big commodity trading desks. Indeed we may find that by the time the changes are realized, the impact may be significantly discounted.

Financial Times - Alphaville
Beware, commodity index rebalancing ahead
By Izabella Kaminska
Jan 05 15:34

The major commodity indices rebalance their respective asset weightings once a year (or occasionally more) — and with that comes a mass dose of buying and selling. The 2009 rebalancing is expected to start sometime this week.

Luckily, JP Morgan has produced its best guess of how the 2009 reweightings of the DJ AIGCI and the S&P GSCI indices will impact the market.

The weightings for both indices are released ahead of time, but begin to kick in the first few working days of the new year. In the case of the DJ-AIGCI — which JP Morgan estimates has $25bn in funds tracking it — the new weightings come into force during the roll period that begins January 9th. The S&P GSCI index weightings kick-in after its January roll which commences January 8th. JP Morgan estimates about $50 bn of investment into that index...

A New Year's Resolution on US Financial Markets from the Incoming Administration

These are strong, almost startling words from Bart Chilton, part of Obama's incoming administration, currently on the CFTC.

The message is good and to the point. The illustration of the performance of the regulators over the past ten (not eight) years is remarkable, an indictment of the existing Federal regulatory system as a whole.

Actions will speak louder than words. We will all look forward to seeing what happens in Washington over the next few months, and in particular, what is done by the CFTC and the SEC in reforming US financial markets.

Washington
Time to restore mission of regulators
By Bart Chilton
January 1, 2009

In the building that currently houses the president-elect's transition team, there used to be an imposing bronze plaque with the visage of the Securities and Exchange Commission's redoubtable third chairman, William O. Douglas. It was emblazoned with the inspiring legend, "We are the Investor's Advocate."

For many decades, the SEC enjoyed the reputation of living up to the noble standard of public service. The plaque no longer graces the entryway of the SEC's new quarters, and with the recent revelations of failure to detect and prosecute incidents of egregious securities fraud and abuse, both internally and externally, the agency's reputation has been severely tarnished.

These types of disclosures make us as public servants ask some fundamental questions: Why are we here? The Founding Fathers had the answer: We are employed to protect the common wealth and serve the public good. We are not here to serve amorphous philosophical, economic or ideological concepts such as "financial markets" or "economies."

Our task is to serve the public -- those people in the hinterlands, many of whom have recently lost 30 percent or more of their retirement funds and/or home values and who now face losing their jobs. Our "client," our "constituent," is the American consumer and worker, the businessman or woman who generates and uses the products and services that comprise our "markets" and our "economy." If we fail to protect, first and foremost, these individual Americans, we cannot succeed in assuring the strength of our economy, nor in protecting the integrity of our financial market system.

Do we need to have statutes and regulations in place to ensure reliability of the marketplace? Of course we do, but over the past decade "the marketplace" has been exalted to a position perceived as virtually omnipotent and omniscient, while consumer protections have been generally neglected. The consequence lies scattered around us.

By veering too sharply to the right and letting go of the regulatory reins, we provided neither the market nor the consumer a great service. Rather we harmed both, and have a long hike to escape the resulting global economic meltdown. We must be careful not to over-correct -- not to go so far in the other direction that we stifle innovation and market growth. But it is clearly time for federal financial regulators to re-evaluate our current statutes and regulations, and to put "common sense rules of the road," as the president-elect has suggested, in place to protect consumers and bring our economy back into balance.

The SEC isn't the only federal financial regulator to have failed in serving the public. The Treasury Department appears to have lost its way as well, when a $700 billion bailout package, purportedly written to ensure against unconscionable executive compensation was, within weeks after passage, found to have a loophole allowing such compensation.

Federal banking regulators seem to be off course, permitting casino-like buying and selling of trillions of dollars worth of virtually worthless transactions. When gasoline topped $4 a gallon, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission dropped the ball, unable to oversee speculation's uneconomic role in the U.S. commodities markets.

In decades past, the CFTC has been charged with being too tied to the industry, too closely aligned with the regulated, and overly concerned with protecting "markets" rather than consumers. We've made good progress, and there are very fine people in all of these agencies and departments, but we too can and must do much better.

I have advocated a comprehensive legislative reform of the laws governing over-the-counter trading, and requested that authority over these critically important markets be vested in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC, a small agency in comparison to the SEC, has exclusive jurisdiction over risk-management markets in the United States, and has in recent years carved several significant notches in its enforcement belt.

At any one time, this small agency, with one-tenth the enforcement staff of the SEC, is investigating or prosecuting anywhere between 750 and 1,000 individuals or entities for violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. The agency has, just in the past year, tagged bad actors with more than $630 million in fines and settlements, in actions involving fraud, manipulation and other misconduct. Not a bad record for a small agency operating on a shoestring budget -- and we'd be able to do even more if given the authority.

With the collapse of the economy, the transition of government already under way with the new Obama administration, and the appointment of an excellent new federal financial regulatory team, it will soon be time to implement this new legislation, and similar consumer protection initiatives.

Also, we need to restore the clarity of our own mission in government: that we are here to assure financial opportunity and market fairness to the public. We need to regain the public trust.

With a shared vision of our mission and much needed reforms, our duties and responsibilities will flow clearly. Chief among these duties is a strong and aggressive enforcement arm. Markets must be free from fraud and manipulation for them to operate as they should -- for all Americans. This baseline approach to enforcement protects consumers and allows for open and free markets that are able to grow and innovate.

Investor's Advocate: A good legend, apparently forgotten. All federal financial regulators should use a new door sign: Consumers First. Everything else will follow.

Bart Chilton is a commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a Democrat, and a member of the Obama transition team.

The CFTC Is Failing to Regulate Commodity Market Ponzi Schemes

Christopher Cox recently admitted that the SEC has willfully overlooked significant abuses in the equity markets. One thing on which we agreed with John McCain was that his tenure at the SEC is a national disgrace and he should have been dismissed. Given the US stock market bubbles over the past eight years one can hardly disagree.

It is becoming obvious that there is significant price manipulation in the commodity markets, to the point where they have become nothing more than Ponzi schemes in which the object of the investment will never be delivered, and a market roiling default will occur.

Below is one example in the oil markets. Silver is an even better example. Ted Butler has documented the abuse on numerous occasions, and has been ignored in the same way those exposing the Madoff Ponzi scheme to the SEC were also willfully and repeatedly ignored.

The problem with commodities price manipulation is even worse than the manipulation of stock prices since it involves the capital formation of the means of production with significant lead times. Not only does this manipulation cheat investors and small speculators, but it causes significant, damaging misalignments in supply and demand in the real economy. The example of the electricity markets in California and the Enron fraud was the wake up call that was ignored.

It is beyond simple fraud. This has disproportionate and severely damaging effects on other countries in the global economy.

The perfect solution, the complete market restructuring is complex, and is detailed below. Expect the market manipulators to wallow in the complexity and create loopholes for future exploitation.

However, there is an 80% effective solution that is simple. Transparency of positions is a first step. The second step is to impose strict position limits for those who are not hedging actual and verifiable inventory and production.

The position limits for the 'naked shorting' is appropriate for those who believe that the market price is incorrect. But there comes a time when the naked shorting becomes so large that it IS the market, and the consequences of such outrageous manipulation are real and significant.

Constantly tinkering with regulations and making them more complex is not the answer. The root of the problem has been the lack of enforcement and the bad actions of a handful of banks that have become serial market manipuators since the overturn of Glass-Steagall. There really are no new financial products or frauds. There are just variations on familiar themes.

It is not clear that the solution can come from within the US. Violence never works, and writing our Congress and voting for a reform candidate have now been done, although we should continue this.

A practical solution may be ultimately imposed on the US by the rest of the world, and that is a less attractive prospect than an internal solution.



Reuters
NYMEX oil benchmark again in question
By John Kemp
December 23rd, 2008

The record differential between the front-month and more liquid second-month contracts at expiry last week once again raised pointed questions about whether the NYMEX light sweet contract is serving as a good benchmark for the global oil market, or sending misleading signals about the state of supply and demand.

The expiring January 2009 contract ended down $2.35 on Friday at $33.87, while the more liquid February contract actually rose 69 cents to settle at $42.36 - an unprecedented contango from one month to the next of $8.49.

Criticism of the contract is not new, and past calls for reform have been successfully sidelined. But with policymakers taking a keener interest as a result of wild gyrations in oil prices this year, and a continued focus on regulatory changes to improve market functioning in future, there is at least a chance changes will be adopted as part of a wider package of futures market adjustments.

AN UNREPRESENTATIVE PRICE

During the surge to $147 per barrel earlier this year, OPEC repeatedly criticized the NYMEX reference price for overstating the real degree of tightness in the physical market and causing prices to overshoot on the upside. (That was the point, see Enron for details - Jesse)

While rallying NYMEX prices seemed to point to an acute physical shortage and need for more oil, Saudi Arabia could not find buyers for the 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of extra oil promised to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon or the 300,000 bpd promised to U.S. President George Bush in June.

Bizarrely, rather than acknowledge there was something wrong with the reference price, some market participants suggested Saudi Arabia should increase the already large discounts for its physical crude to achieve sales in a market that clearly did not need the oil, and was not paying enough contango to make storing it economic (contango is where the futures price is above the spot market). (There is nothing bizarre about it. That is standard disinformation by the frauds and their mouthpieces - Jesse)

The NYMEX WTI price may have achieved unprecedented media fame as a result of the “super-spike”, but a futures price to which producers and consumers were paying ever larger discounts for actual barrels was clearly not a good indication of where the market as a whole was trading. (It was a fraud. Lots of people lost lots of money in it. It was a great excuse to build a Ponzi scheme in a market price, raise the price of gasoline to $4 gallon, and then take the market down. This is the 1929 model of market manipulation pure and simple - Jesse)

Now the market risks overshooting in the other direction. Intense pressure on the front month in recent weeks has more to do with the contract’s peculiarities (in particular storage restrictions at the delivery point) than a further deterioration in oil demand or a market vote of no-confidence in the 2.2 million barrels per day further cut in oil production announced by OPEC at the end of last week. (The beauty about price manipulation is that it works in both directions. Different damage, but the same jokers get to pocket their fraudulent gains - Jesse)

The collapse in NYMEX prices nearby risks exaggerating the real degree of oversupply and demand destruction, sending the wrong signal to producers and consumers about the wider availability of crude in the petroleum economy. (It may take a few countries along with it. But that may be by intent. Chavez and Putin are not on the Friends of W list - Jesse)

DOMESTIC PRICE, GLOBAL BENCHMARK

The NYMEX contract is for a very special type of crude oil (light sweet) delivered at a very special location (Cushing, Oklahoma) in the interior of the United States. It is not representative of the majority of crude oil traded internationally (most of which is heavier and sourer) and delivered by ocean-going tankers.

These specifications made sense when the contract was introduced as a benchmark for the U.S. domestic market.

U.S. refiners have a strong preference for light oils, for which they were prepared to pay a premium, because of their much higher yield to gasoline. The inland delivery location, centrally located and near the main Texas oilfields, rather than one on the coast, made sense for a contract that tried to capture the “typical” base price for crude oil paid by refiners across the continental United States.

But these specifications make much less sense now the NYMEX price is increasingly used a benchmark for the global petroleum economy, in which light sweet crudes are only a small fraction of total output. Just as NYMEX prices sent the wrong signals about physical oil availability on the way up, distorting the market and triggering more demand destruction than was really necessary, they now risk sending the wrong ones on the way down.

Earlier this year, the problem was a relative shortage of light sweet crude oils at Cushing, while all the extra barrels being offered to the market by Saudi Arabia were heavier, sourer crudes that could not be delivered against the contract. Moreover, extra Saudi crudes would have arrived by ship, and the pipeline and storage configurations around Cushing would have made it difficult to deliver them quickly against the contract.

Financial speculators were able to push NYMEX higher safe in the knowledge Saudi Arabia could not take the other side and overwhelm them by delivering physical barrels to bring prices down. The resulting spike exhibited all the characteristics of a technical squeeze: tight contract specifications ensured there could be shortage of NYMEX light sweet inland oils even while the global market was oversupplied by heavier, sourer seaborne ones.

Now the opposite problem is occurring. Crude stocks at Cushing have doubled from 14.3 million barrels to 27.5 million since mid-October. Stocks around the delivery point are at a near-record levels and approaching the maximum capacity of local tank and pipeline facilities (https://customers.reuters.com/d/graphics/CUSHING.pdf).

As a result, the market has been forced into a huge contango as storage becomes increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain, ensuring the expiring futures trade at a substantial discount.

But Cushing inventories are not typical of the rest of the U.S. Midwest (https://customers.reuters.com/d/graphics/PADD2_EX_CUSHING.pdf) or along the U.S. Gulf Coast (https://customers.reuters.com/d/graphics/PADD3.pdf), where stock levels are high relative to demand but nowhere near as overfull as in Oklahoma.

Once again the problem is geography. Coastal refiners have responded to the downturn by cutting imports of seaborne crude, limiting the stock build. But the inland market is the destination for some Canadian crudes that have nowhere else to go, and the pipeline configuration means they cannot be trans-shipped to other locations readily.

Light sweet crude has been piling up in the region, with refiners choosing to deliver the unwanted excess to the market by delivering it into Cushing.

NEW GRADES, NEW DELIVERY POINTS

The easiest way to make NYMEX more representative would be to widen the number of crude grades that can be delivered, and open a new delivery point along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Both reforms would link the contract more tightly into the global petroleum economy. (The easiest way would be to do exactly as I suggested above. It can be done with the stroke of a pen and the kick of a few asses - Jesse)

NYMEX already permits some flexibility in delivery grades. Sellers can deliver UK Brent and Norwegian Oseberg at small fixed discounts to the settlement price, and Nigerian Bonny Light and Qua Iboe, as well as Colombia’s Cusiana at small premiums.

In principle, there is no reason the contract cannot be modified further to allow a wider range of foreign oils to be delivered at larger discounts to the settlement price.

More importantly, NYMEX could open a second delivery location along the Gulf Coast, increasing the amount of storage capacity available, and linking it more closely into the tanker market.

If prices spiked again, a coastal delivery location would make it much easier for Saudi Arabia to short the market and deliver its own barrels into the rally. By widening the physical basis, it would also make it easier to support the market by cutting international production and avert a glut trapped around the delivery location.

So far, the market has continued to resist change. But there are signs policymakers might enforce one. (No one likes to give up a successful fraud voluntarily until the clock runs out - Jesse)

Earlier in the year, Saudi Arabia strongly hinted western governments should look at reforming their own futures markets rather than call for production of even more barrels of oil that could not be sold at the prevailing (unrealistic) price. (Saudi Arabia is the US's creature so any criticism is coming from a loyal source and credible - Jesse)

Naturally, some of the reform impetus has ebbed along with prices and demand. But policymakers continue to show interest in structural reforms, as was evident at last week’s London Energy Meeting, and there is an increased willingness to challenge unfettered market dynamics.

It is still possible the incoming Obama administration might force contract changes as part of a wider package of reforms designed to improve the functioning of commodity markets, reduce volatility and send clearer, more consistent price signals to the industry and consumers.