Tag Archives: Precious Metals

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Small Crowds, Shrinking Premiums The prices of gold and silver rose five bucks and 37 cents respectively last week. Is this the blast off to da moon for the silver rocket of halcyon days, in other words 2010-2011? We will look at the basis signals in a bit. But for now, we want to comment on the absolutely moribund state...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Oil is Different Last week, we showed a graph of rising open interest in crude oil futures. From this, we inferred — incorrectly as it turns out — that the basis must be rising. Why else, we asked, would market makers carry more and more oil? We are grateful to Peter Tenebrarum at Acting Man and Steve Saville at The...

The New In Gold We Trust Report is Here! As announced in our latest gold market update last week, this year’s In Gold We Trust report by our good friends Ronald Stoeferle and Mark Valek has just been released. This is the biggest and most comprehensive gold research report in the world, and as always contains a wealth of interesting new material, as well as the traditional large collection of charts and data that...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Crude Oil Market Structure – Extremes in Speculative Net Long Positions On May 28, markets were closed so this Report is coming out a day later than normal. The price of gold rose nine bucks, and the price of silver 4 pennies. With little action here, we thought we would write 1,000 words’ worth about oil. Here is a chart...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Gold Lending and Arbitrage There was no rise in the purchasing power of gold this week. The price of gold fell $22, and that of silver $0.19. One question that comes up is why is the fundamental price so far above the market price? Starting in January, the fundamental price began to move up sharply, and the move...

Moribund Meandering Earlier this week, the USD gold price was pushed rather unceremoniously off its perch above the $1300 level, where it had been comfortably ensconced all year after its usual seasonal rally around the turn of the year. For a while it seemed as though the $1,300 level may actually hold, but persistent US dollar strength nixed that idea. Previously many observers (too many?) expected gold to finally...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Shill Alarm One well-known commentator this week opined about the US health care industry: “…the system is designed the churn and burn… to push people through the clinics as quickly as possible. The standard of care now is to prescribe some medication (usually antibiotics) and send people on their way without taking the...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Waiting for Permanent Backwardation  The price of gold dropped 9 bucks, while that of silver rose 3 cents. Readers often ask us if permanent backwardation (when gold withdraws its bid on the dollar) is still coming. We say it is certain (unless we can avert it by offering interest on gold at large scale). They ask is it...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango. Unfulfilled Prophecies The price of gold fell $12 last week, but that of silver dropped 63 cents. What’s up with silver?! A prominent analyst wrote on April 19 of the “breakout” in silver. Of course, without the benefit of the basis and the Monetary Metals fundamental price, he could only see the price chart, plus the...

See the introduction and the video for the terms gold basis, co-basis, backwardation and contango  Goldfinger Strikes, Sort Of This week, we saw a tweet from a prominent goldbug. He said, “Russia added another 9 tons of gold to its reserves in March. The hits just keep coming.” How many errors in this short quip? We count six, exactly one error for every two words. One, we call this the fallacy of the famous market...