COMEX waiting to snap

Since the April gold price ‘take down’ we have witnessed the registered COMEX gold inventory reduce by a staggering 80% (with reportedly much of that off to China).  December is historically by far the biggest physical delivery month but rather than the usual close outs or roll-overs of future contracts to the next month we’ve seen after the first delivery day on Friday an incredible 10,157 contracts (equating to 1,015,700 ounces) standing for delivery against an inventory of only 590,820 ounces.  So in simple terms nearly twice as much gold as is held can be called upon for delivery.  This has never happened before in nearly 40 years of COMEX’s history and you can see why we keep harping on about ‘paper gold’ v physical gold.  With 26 days left to the end of the delivery period on 31 December it could well be an interesting New Year’s eve for owners of real gold.