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...

Paulson Hitting a High Note in Treasury Debt Issuance

One might surmise that Treasury is hitting a hard high note on the Three Year Treasury issuance because this is the preferred duration of the central banks of China, Saudi Arabia and Japan among others, on behalf of their people.

At some point the Ten Year Note may become the favorite product of Mr. Bernanke, our own central banker, as a chaser to the the junk bond cocktails he is chugging down now.

As an aside, check out the action on the long end of the curve today in Big Daddy, the 30 Year Bond.

Across the Curve
Treasury Supply
By John Jansen
January 5th, 2009

Henry Paulson is not following the sage counsel of TS Eliot and is instead going out with a bang rather than Eliot’s whimper.

The Treasury announced today that they will auction $30 billion 3 year notes on Wednesday. The increase in issuance here is stunning. The 3 year was reintroduced in November at $25 billion. In its previous reincarnation it was a quarterly issue.

The US government has a desperate need for cash and in their infinite wisdom the debt managers chose to place this bond on a monthly cycle. In the span of two months they have bumped the total from $25 billion to $30 billion. If we start with the November issue and make the poor assumption that they will not tweak this again, the Treasury will raise an incredible $353 billion the 3 year sector in the year that ends October 31 2009.

The Treasury also announced the reopening of the 10 year note for a second time. Treasury issued $20 billion in November and $16 billion when they reopened it in December.

Prior to November the 10 year auction occurred eight times each year. This is the first announcement of the expanded monthly cycle for that issue and they will sell $16 billion this time. That means that the taxpayers have issued $52 billion to the public of this mega issue.

Previously the Treasury had announced that it would sell $8 billion TIPS tomorrow.

I rarely wade into the bill pit but to make the point I would be remiss if I did not note the supply in that market.

Each Monday since time immemorial Treasury has issued three month bills and six month bills. Today is no different and they will raise in total $53 billion in those auctions.

I do not have the auction dates but the Treasury will also sell $24 billion four week bills and $35 billion special 70 day bulls this week.

Sister Consolata taught me very well in grammar school ( they taught grammar in the 1950s. We would diagram sentences) and the sum of those numbers is $166 billion.

Against that background, I suggest that Hank Paulson is leaving a blazing trail of glory in his wake.