Comex Claims Per Deliverable Ounce of Gold at 92 to 1 - Let Them Eat Treasuries

Luckily for the Comex most of the gold deliveries this month have been taken by JPM for their 'house account.'

January is not an active month for the precious metals on the Comex, so the wiseguys only need to muddle through the next couple of weeks, and then it should be clear sailing until February.

I hear the bullion banks are putting some heavy pressure on the miners to hedge their forward production, and even on some central banks to lease more gold. I am a little surprised that there have not been more acquisitive moves on the miners at these fire sale prices.

This situation on the Comex is not a default scenario per se. There is plenty of gold available, but it might require higher prices for customers to present their bullion for delivery. Unless of course that customer is a big bullion bank which is playing multiple sides of the same market.

Still, it pays to be prepared I suppose, even for the unlikely. CME Seeks To Broaden Cash Options In Clearinghouse Members Default Rules

Have a great holiday.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

A rather tiring week to say the least.

Intraday commentary here.

Have a pleasant weekend.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Holiday Cheer

And the paint is on the tape.  Ho ho ho.

JP Morgan Takes On More Gold, 61,790 Ounces Come Out of Mocatta

The big stopper JPM added about two tonnes of gold, and 61,790 ounces of bullion came out of the Scotia Mocatta registered inventory.

This brings the total deliverable (registered) ounces of gold down to 432,612 which is a number that we have not seen in this inventory category since the early 1990's, well before the gold bull market.

Supposedly Simon Weeks of Scotia Mocatta, who is also the chairman of the LBMA, was encouraging producers to start hedging their production, committing their bullion to the banks before prices fall any further.

Now I don't know if that is true, but if I were a highly leveraged bullion bank or mint, and I had multiple paper claims on each ounce of inventory, I would probably encourage my analysts and other sales associates to talk up the bear case too.  But this is what Andrew Maguire says, and it is only hearsay. 

If I were such a one as Weeks I would come out and deny it, if it was not true.  Either you said something as market guidance to some participants, or you did not.

By the way, I wonder what happened to those two JPM whistleblowers that Andrew knows, who are stashed away in some lawyers' offices somewhere.

What a funny, opaque market.  More like a game of liar's poker than an efficient and transparent clearing mechanism where informed producers and buyers meet to allocate resources.  But economic theory says that fraud is not possible because people are purely rational and act in their long term best interests, always.  And at least on the mythical planet of Vulcan, where many Ivy League economists apparently originate, logic dictates that honesty is the best policy.