Decent Rallies In Gold And Silver To End The Week

The gold price didn't do much until around 9 a.m. China Standard Time on their Friday morning -- and from that point it began to head a bit higher. That lasted until around 8:25 a.m. in London -- and it was then sold quietly lower until its spike low tick was set around 8:30 a.m. in New York. A serious rally began at that juncture -- and that lasted until 12:30 p.m. EDT. From there it continued to creep quietly higher until the market closed at 5:00 p.m.

The low and high ticks were recorded by the CME Group as $1,785.30 and $1,820.10 in the December contract. The December/February price spread differential in gold at the close yesterday was $2.20...February/April was $1.60 -- and April/June was only $1.40 an ounce.

Gold finished the Friday session in New York at $1,818.00 spot, up $26.20 from Thursday's close. Net volume was extremely heavy at a bit over 242,000 contracts -- and there was a hefty 72,500 contracts worth of roll-over/switch volume out of December and into future months...mostly February.

For all intents and purposes, the price action in silver was mostly similar to gold's, at least up until its 8:31 a.m. low tick was set in New York on Friday morning. But its rally from there ran into a fair amount of resistance -- and ended around 11:40 a.m. in COMEX trading...about an hour before the gold price got stepped on. Also like gold, it continued to creep higher until the market closed at 5:00 p.m. EDT.

The low and high ticks in silver were reported as $23.665 and $24.255 in the December contract. The December/March price spread differential in silver at the close yesterday was 4.9 cents...March/May was 3.3 cents -- and May/July was 3.4 cents an ounce.

Silver finished the Friday session in New York at $24.145 spot, up 38.5 cents on the day and, like gold, almost on its high tick. Net volume was a bit elevated at a bit over 54,500 contracts -- and there was a very hefty 22,500 contracts worth of roll-over/switch volume out of December and into future months...mostly March.

The platinum price wandered higher until, like silver and gold, ran into 'something' around 9:25 a.m. in Zurich. It was sold lower from there -- and its spike low tick also came a minute after 8:30 a.m. in New York. It then had a pretty vicious up/down/up move that ended about fifteen minutes after 11 a.m. EDT Zurich close. After that, its price chopped quietly sideways until trading ended at 5:00 p.m. EDT. Platinum was closed at $1,032 spot, up 8 dollars on the day.

Palladium edged higher until very shortly after 11 a.m. China Standard Time on their Friday morning -- and it then jumped up a bunch. It wandered quietly sideways from there until shortly before 10:30 a.m. in Zurich -- and like the other three precious metals was sold lower until around 8:30 a.m. in New York...its low tick of the day. Its ensuing rally got capped and turned lower around 9:30 a.m. EDT -- and it wandered quietly and unevenly sideways until trading ended at 5:00 p.m. Palladium was closed at $1,967 spot, up 27 bucks from Thursday.

Based on the kitco.com spot closing prices in silver and gold posted above, the gold/silver ratio worked out to 75.3 to 1 on Friday...compared to 75.4 to 1 on Thursday.

Here's Nick's 1-year Gold/Silver Ratio chart, updated with the last five days of data. Click to enlarge.

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The dollar index closed very late on Thursday afternoon in New York at 94.347 -- and opened higher by 1 basis point once trading commenced around 7:45 p.m. EDT on Thursday evening, which was 7:45 a.m. China Standard Time on their Friday morning. It rallied a bit until 11:05 a.m. CST -- and then crept quietly lower until 3:25 p.m. CST. Its 'rally' from there topped out at 8:30 a.m. in New York -- and about thirty minutes later, began to head lower. The low tick was set at 1:08 p.m. -- and from that juncture it had a quiet up/down move going into the 5:00 p.m. EDT close.

The dollar index finished the Friday trading session at 94.320...down about 3 basis points from its close on Thursday...but a full 10 basis points above its indicated spot close on the DXY chart below. One has to wonder what that was about.

Here's the DXY chart for Friday, thanks to Bloomberg as always -- and the above discrepancy should be duly noted. Click to enlarge.

And here's the 5-year U.S. dollar index chart that appears in this spot in every Saturday column...thanks to stockcharts.com as always. The delta between its close...94.32...and the close on the DXY chart above, was basically nothing at all from its spot close on Friday. Click to enlarge as well.

U.S. 10-Year Treasury: 1.4530%...down 0.0710 (-4.66%)...as of 2:59 p.m. EDT.

Here's the one-year 10-year U.S. Treasury chart, courtesy of yahoo.com as always -- and as I keep pointing out, you can see where the Fed began yield curve control in March. That upward bias that started at the beginning of August, became far more pronounced starting on September 21.

However, looking at the chart below -- and as I said in this space last week, I'm wondering if the peak in the yield was capped on October 20...its very recent high tick, as the trend has been mostly lower since -- and accelerated further this past week. Click to enlarge.

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The gold stocks had a brief up/down move starting at the 9:30 open in New York yesterday morning -- and that lasted until around 10:15 a.m. EDT. From there, it was onwards and ever upwards until the market closed at 4:00 p.m. The HUI closed higher by 3.09 percent.

The silver equities traded a mostly similar fashion, except for a two hour chop sideways starting around 11:45 a.m. in New York trading. Because of that, Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment/Silver 7 Index only closed up 2.62 percent...not helped by the underperformance of Peñoles. Click to enlarge if necessary.

Computed manually, the above index closed higher by 2.78 percent.

And here's Nick's 3-year Silver Sentiment/Silver 7 Index chart, updated with Friday's candle. Click to enlarge as well.

The star was First Majestic Silver, as it closed higher by 5.84 percent -- and not far behind was Hecla Mining, closing up 5.09 percent. The aforesaid mentioned Peñoles was the dog of the day, as it closed down 1.27 percent on very decent volume for it.

Yesterday was the big scheduled raid in the physical market by the 'apes' over at the reddit.com/Wallstreetsilver website -- and they were a busy bunch. There's lot of silver eye candy for you today -- and that's linked here.

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Here are two of the usual three charts that show up in every Saturday missive. They show the changes in gold, silver, platinum and palladium in both percent and dollar and cents terms, as of their Friday closes in New York — along with the changes in the HUI and the Silver 7 Index.

Here's the weekly chart, which doubles as the month-to-date chart for this week only -- and from wall-to-wall red last week, it's wall-to-wall green this week. The silver equities are back to outperforming their golden cousins -- and this week by a wide margin. Click to enlarge.

Here's the year-to-date chart -- and it's still wall-to-wall ugly. The silver equities...although underperforming the most...are doing better than the gold stocks vs. their respective underlying precious metals. And when silver is finally allowed to trade freely, it and its associated equities, will bury everything gold related. Click to enlarge.

As Ted Butler has mentioned on many occasions, the short positions of the Big 4/8traders are the sole reason that precious metal prices aren't at the moon already, as every other group of traders in the COMEX futures market, including most of the rest of the commercial traders, are net long against them.

In the COT discussion further down, the commercial net short position in silver decreased by a bit, but the commercial net short position in gold increased, but only by a hair.

The Big 8 commercial traders overall have made little progress in their attempts to reduce their monstrous short position in gold, silver and platinum. They're certainly down from their highs of earlier this year, but they still remain obscene and grotesque nonetheless. They increased their short position in silver by a bit, but reduced it in gold by a bit during this reporting week...however not by any amount that really mattered. It's a good bet that they've added to their short positions in both because of the rallies on Thursday and Friday.

The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that 1 gold and 13 silver contracts were posted for delivery within the COMEX-approved depositories on Tuesday.

In gold, the lone short/issuer was Stonex Financial -- and JPMorgan stopped it. Both transactions involved their respective client accounts.

In silver, the lone short/issuer there was Advantage -- and the lone long/stopper was ADM. Like in gold, both transactions involved their respective client accounts.

The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here.

Month-to-date November deliveries in gold and silver are 559 and 922 COMEX contracts respectively.

The CME Preliminary Report for the Friday trading session showed that gold open interest in November increased by 197 COMEX contracts, leaving 580 still open, minus the 1 contract mentioned a few paragraphs ago. Thursday's Daily Delivery Report showed that 2 gold contracts were actually posted for delivery on Monday, so that means that 197+2=199 more gold contracts were added to the November delivery month. Silver o.i. in November increased by 21 contracts, leaving 49 still around, minus the 13 mentioned a few paragraphs ago. Thursday's Daily Delivery Report showed that zero silver contracts were posted for delivery on Monday, so that obviously means that 21 more silver contacts jut got added to November.

Total gold open interest at the close yesterday exploded by 32,751 COMEX contracts, a very depressing number -- and I'm hoping/praying that it's spread related. Total silver o.i. only rose by only 1,862 contracts...a number I was happy to see.

Much to my surprise, there were no reported changes in GLD -- and an even bigger surprise was that there was 509,010 troy ounces of silver removed from SLV. However, it may have represented an exchange of SLV shares for physical. I'll be interested in what Ted has to say about this.

In other gold and silver ETFs and mutual funds on Planet Earth on Friday, net of any changes in COMEX, GLD & SLV inventories, there was a net 77,853 troy ounces of gold taken out, but a net 586,673 troy ounces of silver was added...all into iShares/SVR and Deutsche Bank.

There was no sales report from the U.S. Mint yesterday.

Month-to-date, if the numbers can be trusted, the mint has sold 20,000 troy ounces of gold eagles -- 474,500 silver eagles -- and 7,900 one-ounce platinum eagles. The sales numbers on the mint's gold buffalo page still shows eagle sales only for the entire year -- a no gold buffalo sales at all. This is getting weirder by the day.

In my phone call with Ted yesterday, he reiterated his opinion that the mint is definitely withholding production/sales from the market in order not to exacerbate an already tight-as-a-drum wholesale market in physical silver.

I don't have the space for the charts in my column today, but "The Perth Mint sold 59,750 troy ounces of gold and 1,352,275 troy ounces of silver in minted product form during October."

The only physical activity in gold over at the COMEX-approved depositories on the U.S. east coast on Thursday was the 128.600 troy ounces/six kilobars that was shipped out of Brink's, Inc. There was no 'in' activity once again. There was a bit of paper activity, as 6,751.710 troy ounces/210 kilobars was transferred from the Registered category and back into Eligible over at HSBC USA. The link to this is here.

It was far busier in silver, as 1,394,605 troy ounces was reported received -- and 180,187 troy ounces was shipped out.

In the 'in' category, there were two truckloads...1,280,232 troy ounces...that were dropped off at Brink's, Inc. -- and the remaining 114,372 troy ounces ended up at CNT. All of the 'out' activity happened over at JPMorgan.

There was a bit of paper activity, as 54,071 troy ounces was transferred from the Registered category and back into Eligible over at Manfra, Tordella & Brookes, Inc. The link to all of the COMEX silver activity on Thursday is here.

It was also pretty busy over at the COMEX-approved gold kilobar depositories in Hong Kong on their Thursday. They reported receiving 3,158 of them -- and shipped out 2,000 kilobars. Except for the 150 kilobars that arrived at Loomis International, all of the remaining in/out activity took place at Brink's, Inc. as always. The link to that, in troy ounces, is here.

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