NAV Premiums of Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - First Gold Halt of 2014

Nanex documents the first trading halt in gold, and the first smash-and-grab bear raid of 2014, here.

"On January 6, 2014 at 10:14:13, Gold futures plummeted $30 on heavy volume. About 4,200 contracts send gold futures prices tumbling $30 and trigger a 10 second trading halt. "

1. February 2014 Gold (GC) Futures

Comex Warehouses: Potential Claims On Deliverable Bullion at Historically High 80 to 1

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.”

William Thomson Lord Kelvin

I think we can stipulate that the lack of real transparency in the precious metals markets, among too many other markets, is appalling. But that is the nature of our fraudulent times.

January is a non-active month for the metals, and overall inventories are adequate for the meager deliveries on the Comex.

Those who hold bullion will need some incentive to move it to the deliverable, registered category for February, which is often a significant physical delivery month for the New York paper markets.

But all in all, the Comex is now the tail wagging the dog, a paper sideshow to the real bullion markets which are moving East.

This is something that very few economists have yet to internalize.

Weekend Reading

"...Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and saviour of death.

Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!

Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.

This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist