The Amazing Disappearing Gold Bullion: Major Precious Metal Inventory Changes in 2013

The difference in the changes between gold and silver inventories is interesting.

I suspect that a great deal of the gold that has been lost this year has been repurposed to private ownership in China, the Mideast, and India among other places.

Although I do not show them here, Palladium and Platinum look much more like silver than gold.

Most of the conventional, off the cuff explanations do not seem to hold together under serious scrutiny.  Yes, silver is 'poor man's gold,' but Platinum certainly isn't.  And an aversion to paper gold, but not to paper silver? 

Gold seems to be somewhat different, even unique, with a large amount of physical inventory leaving the West.

Overall about 811 tonnes of gold have been withdrawn from inventory, while 1,434 tonnes of silver, 21 tonnes of platinum and 1.5 tonnes of palladium were added to these same types of ETFs and funds during 2013.

A remarkable short squeeze on gold bullion supply might occur if the price of gold breaks out, stimulating more investment in these 'paper gold' instruments.

The data for these charts came from Nick Laird at ShareLynx.com. 

Glenn Greenwald on BBC Newsnight

Greenwald does an excellent job responding to a remarkably craven set of questions from the BCC journalist.

The lady doing the interviewing, Kirsty Wark, is almost shameless in a clumsy sort of way. It was as though she was somehow impaired in her thinking.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Appearance Versus Reality

As you know I have commented previously about the large drawdowns in gold bullion inventory from the COMEX and GLD among other things. And there is no similar decrease in silver bullion despite an even greater price decline YTD. There is intraday commentary on this here.

I have not yet figured out what is causing this, and I may never find it out. But it does seem to suggest that if gold should break out and run higher there is going to be a grabasstic rush to stake out all the deliverable and allocated bullion that you can find. YTD the gold bullion inventories are down in excess of 700 tonnes, but we see no decline in silver, platinum or palladium inventories across a broad spectrum of publicly disclosing entities.

So capping gold and silver makes a lot of sense here. Let's see how this impasse between supply and demand of real goods plays out into the end of December.

As you may recall we saw big takedowns in the price of gold and silver the past two Decembers. You can click on the two December Manipulation labels at the bottom of this post to see prior comments from last year.

So, one cannot predict what will happen again, but it will most likely be interesting.

Have a pleasant evening.