COMEX Gold...
Currently 40.7% of registered gold has been taken out.
meltdown2011.wordpress.com
TOTAL REGISTERED..... 2,918,028
TOTAL ELIGIBLE............. 5,601,840
COMBINED TOTAL......... 8,519,868
But there is registered gold and eligible COMEX gold. Here is the distinction between registered and eligible COMEX gold.
"For those who aren’t familiar with the terminology, the registered category of COMEX warehouse bullion stocks generally refers to gold and silver bars against which COMEX warehouse receipts are outstanding. The COMEX publishes these stocks on a daily basis and they can be found here: Silver | Gold. The registered category is the total pool of gold and silver available at any time to meet delivery requirements under expiring futures contracts or to establish initial futures contract positions through a transaction called exchange-for-physicals (I’ll explain this another time). It is important to realize, however, that many parties holding COMEX gold and silver in registered form have no intention of making their holdings available for delivery. By this I mean that such parties are neither (1) holding a short futures position against the warehouse receipt nor (2) willing to sell their registered metal (warehouse receipts) to a party with a short futures position. Indeed, a substantial portion of those holding registered metal would have acquired the COMEX warehouse receipts by holding long futures positions for delivery. In other words, these registered stocks are held for investment and not for commercial purposes.
In comparison, the eligible category of COMEX warehouse bullion stocks generally refers to bullion held in the warehouses that meets the specifications of an acceptable COMEX bar (proper weight, size, purity and refiner) but does not have a COMEX warehouse receipt issued against it. For example, an investor might purchase several 1,000 oz. bars of silver from a dealer and then deliver the bars for allocated storage at a COMEX warehouse. This is a private arrangement and has nothing to do with the COMEX. Unless these bars are officially registered (the easiest way to do this is through the aforementioned exchange-for-physicals), they will remain in the eligible category until withdrawn from the warehouse by the investor. Thus, the appropriate way to treat eligible COMEX warehouse bullion stocks is that they represent metal that could potentially be registered at some point in the future but cannot presently be used to make delivery under a short futures contract."
Here is good analysis supporting gold not yet in backwardation, but it is very close...
silveraxis.com
Norcini:
"On the delivery front – another 274 were taken yesterday bringing this month’s total to a very respectable 12,164 or 1.2 million ounces. Comex is still reporting registered totals at 2.9 million so about 41% of that gold has been taken. The question remains – are these buyers willing to take it OUT of the warehouses and remove it completely? There still remains time for even more deliveries to be taken." |
