Juerg Kiener, managing director and chief investment officer of Swiss Asia Capital in Singapore interviewed on Bloomberg Asia re Gold:
bloomberg.com
Kiener:
"The key issue used to be the dollar until about mid year... the G7 is basically monetizing anything there is... its actually the Yen, the Euro, and the Dollar which are looking very week vs the rest of the world."
"Central banks will always try to keep the currency up and keep the alternative down," Kiener said. He added that it is "impossible" for two banks to hold most of the short position in the silver futures market without it being manipulation.
Kiener re CB's:
"Overall until about two years ago we had hardly any buying except the Chinese, and now you have the Indians coming and taking half the IMF gold away at $1050. That tells you 1050-1040 will create a floor in this bull market because many other central banks will start closing their [unintelligible] positions, their lease positions and will pull the gold back home... we are going to see more and more CB's joining the party, thats the smart money, the big money and there is going to be lots of other money following the party."
From Ed Steers report this morning:
caseyresearch.com
As I mentioned in my Saturday column, it would be no surprise to see another big jump in gold open interest on Friday when the report came out on Monday... well, there was. Gold o.i. rose another 10,711 contracts. Total gold open interest now sits at 521,455 contracts... and Friday's volume was a monstrous 200,380 contracts. In silver, open interest was up a smallish 714 contracts. Total open interest is now north of 140,000... at 140,144 contracts! Volume was a pretty substantial 45,591 contracts. There's no sign whatsoever that the bullion banks are backing down one inch in either metal.
The missing Bank Participation Report [for positions held at the end of trading on Tuesday, November 3rd] put in an appearance late yesterday afternoon. Here's the Reader's Digest version... In silver, two [2] U.S. banks [JPMorgan and HSBC USA] are short 41,318 Comex contracts. They also show 1,426 long positions... for a net short position of 39,892 Comex contracts... which represents 30.9% of the entire Comex open interest in silver. Taking out all the market-neutral spread trades would drive this percent of open interest [on the short side] to around 45%... and that's just two U.S. banks!!! That's preposterous!!! If that 45% is true, then it means that JPMorgan and HSBC hold virtually the entire Comex net short position all by themselves.
Now for silver and the non-U.S. banks. There are currently eight [8] non-U.S. banks that hold Comex positions... 2,155 long contracts and 1,578 short contracts. These 8 banks are net long 577 Comex contracts... and these contracts represent 0.45% of total open interest.
In gold, two [2] U.S. banks [JPMorgan and HSBC USA] are short 123,331 Comex gold contracts. They also hold 523 long Comex contracts. Their net short position in gold is 122,808 Comex contracts. These two above banks hold 24.9% of the entire open interest in Comex gold... all of it held short. If I take out the market-neutral spread trades, these two U.S. bullion banks are short more than 30% of the entire Comex gold market.
Now, for the non-U.S. bullion banks, of which there are 18 in total that hold Comex gold contracts. They are long 7,914 contracts and short 39,340 Comex contracts. Their net short position is 31,426 Comex contracts spread over 18 banks. This represents 6.4% of the total open interest... but well under 1% for each of the 18 non-U.S. banks. Not that I want to muddy the water at this point, but I would bet a fair chunk of money that of the 31,426 Comex contracts held short by those 18 non-U.S. banks... 75% of that amount is held by less than a third of those 18 banks.
In a nutshell, as of the end of trading last Tuesday [a week ago today], JPMorgan and HSBC USA were short 199.5 million ounces of silver and 12.3 million ounces of gold... about 45% and 30% of total [net] Comex open interest respectively. And the CFTC and your gold and silver companies just sit on their respective asses and do nothing. |
