NAV Premiums of Precious Metal Trust and Funds - 15,230 Ounces Gold Redeemed From Sprott

Since the last time this was posted on May 29, about 15,230 ounces of gold were redeemed from the Sprott Physical Gold Trust.  That represents a bit less than half a tonne, and $18,276,000 at $1200 per ounce.

With the discount to NAV so slim at about 0.32%, or around $58,000, less fees and storage costs, there might be another reason to do something like this other than a pure arbitrage.  I can see someone doing it to take the gold as a long term physical holding, and to essentially avoid the Sprott management fee.  But again, why take it out of the ETF and not the Comex?  Is the Comex somehow more difficult than usual in obtaining physical delivery out of the system?

 

Yes, Sprott has an offer out to acquire some gold and silver assets at GTU and SBT, but an arbitrage on acquisition could be carried out in the conventional way buying and selling the units in size with leverage, not taking delivery of a relatively small amount of gold.

If one were to take that gold and move it into a Far Eastern market where physical commands a premium it might make more sense.

 

Before you ask, the Trust did not 'sell it' because their cash level has not increased commensurately with such an action.  And if an individual holder of the units wanted to raise cash for some purpose, the sale of the units themselves on an exchange is much more cost effective.  No it seems more likely that someone wanted gold bullion for some reason.

Funny way to take your delivery, isn't it?  Out of the ETFs.  Rather than buying futures contracts and standing for delivery on the Comex, for example, or in the so-called wholesale market in London.

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Who or What Is Killing the Bankers of Wall Street?

 

"While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control.

A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules ... In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."

Francis I

"He was a murderer from the beginning, not standing with the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of lies."

John 8:44

It feeds on whatever is fragile, vulnerable, whether it be the environment, the public peace, the weak, the marginalized, the poor, the disabled, or the hearts and minds of children. 

Peace and love are weakness;  conquest and plunder are our calling.

 

There are a number of possible explanations for this recent cluster of untimely deaths on Wall Street.

They may be suicides. The culture of pressure and high stakes on Wall Street is notorious. Young bankers can literally work themselves to death for managers and institutions who have little or no value or appreciation for normal human life, except for the most cynical of public masquerades.

It is a culture made for the emotionally stunted and sociopaths, for crippled human minds maintaining their existence with insensate obsessions and mindless acquisition.  It takes otherwise good people and slowly turns them inside out.

It has become anti-human.

 

The Banks have set money and personal power above all other values, whether they involve customers or employees or the public. The gods they worship are as old as Babylon, and evil as hell.

In addition to a physical death, which is tragic enough, there are also so many more moral and emotional deaths, the long, slow strangulation and eradication of all that makes us human, which I fear claims many more souls than we might appreciate or even imagine.  It hollows out people and public institutions, extending the reach of the great emptiness.

Wall Street has become the wellspring of a modern culture of death.   

 

Related:  Oliver Stone Says Wall St Culture Worse Now Than Under Gordon Gekko

               Goldman Sachs Analyst, age 22, found dead hours after complaining to father of '100 hour weeks'

               Wall Street Still Blames Everyone Else for the Crisis

Wall Street On Parade

Wall Street Banker Deaths Continue; Where Are the Serious Investigations?

By Pam and Russ Martens

2 June 2015

Last Thursday, 29-year old Thomas J. Hughes, later described by his brother as 'one of the happiest people I know,' allegedly took his life by jumping from a luxury apartment building at 1 West Street in Manhattan. Before any serious investigation had taken place, the New York tabloids had dismissed the matter as a suicide. Hughes was an investment banker on Wall Street.

...for the first time in two centuries, iconic Wall Street banks are being serially charged with committing felonies. These banks have known for the same 18 months that bankers have been dying under suspicious circumstances that felony charges were coming. After a series of deferred prosecution agreements, two weeks ago on May 20, five global banks pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiring to rig markets. Two of those were U.S. banks, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, where recent unusual deaths have occurred.

In any serious investigation, law enforcement is required to look at any potential motive for foul play. But when it comes to serial deaths among Wall Street bankers and technology personnel, occurring repeatedly over the last 18 months in highly unusual circumstances, the deaths are almost instantaneously labeled non-suspicious by the police. But there are two glaring motives for foul-play in almost all of these deaths involving Wall Street or global banks...

This is a brief excerpt. Read the rest of the article here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Active Month and Non-Farm Payroll Shenanigans

There is little risk of an actual default on the Comex in the precious metals. I just wanted to make this clear.  If any default does come, it will be from outside the system in.

Although I emphasize the 'deliverable' component of the warehouses in many of my discussions, it is good to remember that there is quite a bit of gold kicking around the warehouses that *could* be delivered easily enough to fulfill any unusual demand.

The missing ingredient is a 'higher price.' A higher price will shake that additional supply loose.

And we must recall that The Bucket Shop does not do much with the gold they do have, except play liar's poker with it, and mostly shove it around the playing table.

But the fact remains that Open Interest for this active month of June we have just entered is rather high, relative to the amount of gold that is readily deliverable at these prices.

So playing some games like squashing any rallies, or rallying the price up to knock it down, is not a bad play with shaking some of the weaker hands amongst the gold longs loose of their positions. 

 

Letting a rally gain some traction and break out at this point is a dangerous situation for those who are tasked with managing gold's paper price.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.