NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Capture and Crash

The gold/silver ratio is about 80 which is historically very high.

I believe that this is attributable to the price leadership of gold because of a flight to safety from economic uncertainty and policy errors such as negative interest rates.

Further, I believe that there is a looming short squeeze in the physical gold market which, if unaddressed by reforms and market pricing, will cause a dislocation in the global bullion markets.

I am obviously less certain about the second reason, but the data lend themselves to this interpretation. And I believe further that failing to address this mispriced risk is a failure of the regulators and the exchanges to rein in the excesses of the 'synthetic gold' derivative trade.

This is not an incidental lapse, but at the heart of their responsibilities in oversight, and further symptomatic of the financial crises which we have been suffering since at least 1999. Indeed, an environment of Too Big To Fail banking entities and captured and complacent regulators is a pernicious influence on the health of the economy and a barrier to a sustainable recovery.

When this trade cracks open, risking collateral damage in the banking system, there will be those who will say that 'no one could have foreseen this coming.' This is nonsense. It is hard to see only because those whose responsibility it is to protect the public against such abuses is standing idly by while it happens, allowing the insiders and perpetrators to hide their actions and its consequences from the rest of the market for the sake of outsized, short term personal profits.

Another Year of Insubstantial Gold Trading in the New York Market

Looking back, it is evident from the charts below that 2015 was another year of decline for physical gold deliveries in New York.  This is thought to be a benign phenomenon by some.

And one might certainly question how much of that 'stockpile' of gold held in storage is unencumbered, and not subject to multiple hypothecation.

As you know I think that such a decline in the connection to the fundamental flows of a physical commodity creates a potentially dangerous situation, especially in a climate in which most of the major markets have shown themselves to have been systematically rigged by corrupt trading institutions.

The second chart shows how dramatically the physical gold market has moved to the East, leaving both New York and London as influential to price while becoming increasingly insubstantial.

Finally the third chart shows that the New York market still maintains a strong physical delivery function for silver. This is largely thanks to CNT, which is a major supplier of silver to the Mint among other things.

Related:  In China Everyone Can Buy Gold at the Shanghai Gold Exchange - Koos Jansen

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Gresham's Law, Mispricing of Risk, & the Synthetic Gold Carry Trade

"Gold is unique among assets, in that it is not issued by any government or central bank, which means that its value is not influenced by political decisions or the solvency of one institution or another."

Salvatore Rossi, Central Bank of Italy, 30 Sept 2013


Real gold does not fear examination or the furnace.

Chinese Proverb


"Gold has worked down from Alexander's time. When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory."

Bernard M. Baruch


"You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability and intelligence of the members of the government. And with due respect to these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold."

George Bernard Shaw


"Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort."

Antony C. Sutton


Gresham's law is an economic principle that states:  When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.

And this is why gold is flowing from West to East.

There was a fairly lengthy intraday commentary on gold and silver which you might wish to read here.   It covers quite a few topics related to the precious metals.

Surprisingly enough there was an actual delivery of silver at The Bucket Shop yesterday as Nova Scotia stopped 43 contracts for its 'house account.'

Otherwise it was the same old, same old with price going down or nowhere in the highly leveraged, synthetic markets of New York, and with physical bullion slowly leaking out of the warehouses.

The question is not whether or not the financial markets are going to slide into another crisis.  The only real question is when, since there is little to no interest in reform.

"We hypothesize that, having learned from the misadventures of the 1960s, the policy elites, well-versed in the practice of financial engineering and market manipulation, would have seen no need to dump stocks of government gold reserves onto the market, 1960s style, to keep the price in check.

Instead, synthetic gold, sourced in pyramids of credit extended to bullion bankers by central banks with little or no claim on physical substance, have provided a more efficient, better-camouflaged form of intervention. COMEX synthetic gold and related over-the-counter derivatives are traded in macro strategies implemented by hedge funds, high-frequency trades, and commodity funds in pair trades with interest-rate, currencies, equity futures, or even more exotic offsets. The volumes traded are huge, and bear little resemblance to actual flows of physical metal.

We suspect that shorting gold has come to seem like a riskless proposition as long as there is confidence in the Fed. Synthetic gold is the perfect substance for a carry trade: an easy borrow with very low carrying cost and little upside basis risk. Such a hypothesis, in our opinion, does much to explain the incongruity of a declining gold price while fundamentals for paper currency, and the U.S. dollar in particular, obviously deteriorate; while demand for physical gold has exceeded new mine supply for several years running; and while above-ground 400-ounce .995-gold bars located in London, New York, and other financial capitals (in cohabitation with speculative trading activity in paper markets) have steadily dwindled and disappeared into Asian financial centers reformulated as .9999 kilo bars."

Tocqueville Gold Newsletter 2Q 2015

Have a pleasant evening.