LBMA Silver “Price”: A Perfect Storm of Stupidity

Since I’m partial to a bit of alliteration in my post titles, it is just as well that the Fix had a name change because there is a word beginning with F that describes what happened midday London yesterday (and that word is Farce – go wash your mind out with soap). Anyway, “storm of stupidity” is probably a better fit because it looks like a combination of price insensitive sellers using what now appears to be a closed-end fund.

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German gold repatriation update

Three years ago tomorrow (16 January 2013), Deutsche Bundesbank announced that they would be repatriating 300 tonnes of gold from New York and 374 tonnes from Paris by 2020, which was a revision of their October 2012 promise they would transfer 150 tonnes from New York by 2015. So how have they progressed and are they meeting their schedule?


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The two ways gold could repeat the 1970s

Even though investors are constantly told in disclaimer boilerplate that “past performance is no guarantee of future performance” the siren call of historical price charts is hard to resist. In the case of gold and silver, it is impossible to avoid projecting the 1970s bull market on today’s price action due to its epic nature and perfect representation of Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue’s bubble behaviour.

Gold bulls would argue that economies and financial systems have not been healed and accordingly the gold price top in 2011 was only a mid-cycle peak similar to the peak of $197.50 in December 1974. In chart form this claim manifests as per below.


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Is gold stretched?

 

Last week I wrote about the gold silver ratio as a way of determining which represents better value. Since then the ratio has moved higher, with gold outperforming silver on its move above $1,100. This has brought with it a number of bullish articles and while the move is encouraging and supports the idea that gold may have bottomed, in relative terms gold looks stretched to me at this time if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

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Issuers can make deliveries using eligible

Focusing on registered stocks versus open interest is a favourite of many bloggers because it produces dramatic “Comex is about to fail” figures. I have written many times that one also needs to consider eligible stocks as eligible inventory can be converted to registered relatively quickly. Blogger Kid Dynamite noted in passing in an email that December was a textbook example of eligible being used by issuers to make deliveries to stoppers. Not one to take the words of a cartel apologist at face value, I contacted data wrangler Nick Laird for detailed Comex warehouse movements and issuer/stopper figures, to check the facts for myself (and you).

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In August I did an analysis of the ideal percentage allocation between gold & silver. This assumed one picks a percentage allocation and sticks with it. Another investing approach is to switch between gold and silver based on one's view of which metal will outperform the other in the future. One way to determine the point at which to switch is to use the gold/silver ratio.

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