YTD 856 Tonnes of Gold Bullion Leave the Comex and 10 Major Western ETFs and Funds

About 856 tonnes of gold bullion have left the Comex and the ten major western ETFs and funds that I have been tracking in calendar year 2013.

For comparison I include the same chart with the levels shown on 1 Novemember 2013.

I wonder where all this gold bullion is going?   We can see that twelve tonnes were transferred to the Comex, most likely to meet December delivery requirements. 

As for the rest, who can say where it has gone, and when and under conditions it might be coming back.

I wonder how much of that gold was leased out from Western central banks?

Data is from Nick Laird at Sharelynx.com

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - FOMC Meeting This Week - No Yellow Dogs Allowed

As a reminder, there will be an FOMC meeting this week, with the announcement on Wednesday the 18th at 2 PM.

Gold and silver showed some strength today, but until they break their downtrends this just the wiseguys doing the Wall Street shuffle.

Janet Tavakoli has an interesting report out today, How Hidden Bank Risks Drive Investors to Productive Assets, U.S. Treasuries, and Gold.

When I first became interested in gold, traders on the chat boards used to call it 'the yellow dog', or yaller dawg if one was of the Southern persuasion. That was because after the long and brutal bear market, gold was wallowing in the mid 200's and was getting little interest and absolutely no respect.

When this dog turns higher again, and I believe that it will, it may show us a run that would put a greyhound to shame.

Have a pleasant evening.

'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.'

SP 500 and NDX Futures - Deck the Hall With Boughs of Folly

The big tickle today was the US Industrial Production number which came in better than expected.

I have included the economic calendar for this week below.

As I said I think the funds have spend the last week or so squaring up portfolios, getting rid of losers and taking some profits, and now the paint and window dressing start going on into the year end.

After the bell Boeing announced a $10 Billion stock buyback program.

Are there no workhouses, are there no prisons?

JP Morgan 'House Account Only' Trading in Comex Deliveries for 2013

"Are the hedge funds, HFT’s and algos currently having a field day with this worn out trade paying any attention to the steady drain of physical gold on which their speculations are based? As is usually the case in a temporarily successful momentum trade where almost the entire universe is aboard, the answer is probably not."

John Hathaway, The Big Picture in Gold

Here is a chart that I was able to construct from CME data that shows JP Morgan's Comex Gold Delivery activity for their 'house account' only.

I have marked the nominal price of gold on the chart for this year. The last data is as of December 10, 2013.

The months marked with boxes are 'active months' for the delivery process. December is also an active month.

They seem to have had quite a good year for themselves so far. 

For those who would like some color commentary, JPM came into February issuing deliveries to beat the band.  They were quiet in the inactive month and then back swinging hard and delivering in size during April.

In August JPM stopped or took delivery on quite a chunk of gold bullion and the price recovered a bit from its first half of the year pounding.  I can conceptualize this as 'covering' what they have issued in the first half of the year.

Since then the gold price slumped back down into November.   JPM started taking deliveries (stopping) again very heavily in December.   I hear they are stopping something over 90% of warrants issued.

However for the year, and for the year only, their net position is still about 7,600 more contracts issued than stopped in their house account.   This is down from a high of 14,600 contract net issued which they maintained from about April through July. 

I have just added a second chart that shows just the rolling 'net position' for their house account with regard to deliveries for the year.   Just for the sake of tracking their notional position for the year I am going to refer to this as their 'short' although they could just be selling from any inventory which they had somewhere or from the prior year.   And please bear in mind that while this chart show a position that is all negative for the year,  I wanted to be able to plot it against the price of gold, so I inverted the Y axis.

Whether this represents an actual short position or not depends on their opening inventory of gold bullion owned by them, how much of the gold delivered was rehypothecated or leased, and how those contracts were actually settled, be it in equivalent instruments, cash, or actual bullion from whatever sources.

I know this is not all the data we would like to see, and does not begin to address their offsetting positions in other transactions and markets like derivatives.  

And of course I am sure that this is all 'just a hedge' being done in the CTO risk management area, just like the London whale.

Speaking of gold market antics, GATA just sent out this delightful presentation from the Banque de France entitled Managing Gold as a Central Bank.

And here is The Big Picture In Gold by John Hathaway which I recommend that you read.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant weekend.