“Don’t push a bad position”! This is good advice in many varied quests. It is good advice in games like chess or poker. Good advice in sports, business, politics, geopolitics and certainly in militarily ventures. Today we will look at two separate issues where “bad positions” are being pushed to the wall!
First, we have an insane situation brewing in COMEX silver. The open interest finally exceeded 200,000 contracts (1 billion ounces). I believe the only other time this much open interest existed was back in 1980 or ’81. This makes no sense whatsoever, the price is again plumbing 4 year lows yet open interest has moved to record highs? The fact open interest has expanded while price has declined is proof positive the “initiation” of this expanded open interest has been by “shorts” but absorbed by “someone” on the other side of the trade. Total global production of silver is only 800 million ounces or thereabouts so COMEX shorts have contracted to deliver 25% more silver than will even be produced globally over the next 12 months. Silver available for COMEX delivery only totals 57 million ounces so they sit on a naked short time bomb of more than 950 million ounces!
If we look at the July silver contract, there are 55,000 contracts still open with only 4 days remaining before first notice day. This is 275 million ounces still open with only 57 million ounces available to deliver. This is truly fraudulent sales of metal because the metal does not exist to deliver. Yes I know, the apologists will say “this always happens and the shorts will decline into first notice day and evaporate throughout the delivery month”. I agree, this “has” always happened in the past but something is changing now. In the past, total open interest always dropped going into FND, now it is not. Not only are all July contracts closed out being rolled into September, the total is rising rather than declining sharply.