Today, Jan 28, is the last day of trading for the January contract. Gold is down $12 as I write….this happens every month. First hit is the day before to manipulate gold down for the option expiry and then again the following day for last trading day. There are only 21 contracts left open in January so the rational for hitting gold must be to prevent the options that expired yesterday at $900 from being exercised considering the closing price yesterday was so close to $900. Many years ago Buffett exercised only just out the money call options on silver and took the Cartel by surprise as the silver price exploded. This is probably why gold was hit in the ACCESS yesterday as soon as it opened.
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Hi Bill:
As previously reported I bought two Jan. large silver contracts from COMEX. They are paid for and HSBC in NYC has been assigned to deliver them to me. I have certificate numbers and a contact person in Manhattan. For six days now I have been calling this person every day between 3 and 10 times. The phone is never answered. There is voicemail and I have left a polite message. I have not received any response. I have also sent them a FAX politely asking for delivery.

I am now in the process of trying to contact someone higher up at HSBC to see why their custody department is not open for business.

Needless to say, they are making it very hard (ney impossible) for me to get my silver bars. I cannot wait for months as my broker says some of his clients have.

So, I checked with my broker to see what the contract says about physical delivery, terms, conditions, failure, that sort of thing. Guess what. It says nothing. These guys have rigged the game. Even though the COMEX says these contracts are PHYSICAL contracts, which certainly implies that you can pick up your silver or gold, there are no rules regarding delivery, failure, etc. I find this amazing. He said that is because they cash settle 99.9% of all contracts so they are not set up to worry about the 0.1%. Fair enough, but here is my question for lawyers who might be Café readers. Doesn’t making it constructively impossible to take possession of that which they have sold to you constitute fraud? My broker says if you make a big stink they will just give you your money back. That is not what I want. I want the friggin silver. At 11.24 per ounce. They claim to offer physical delivery, but so far that has certainly not been my experience.

So let me get this straight. The paper market dominates the physical but you cannot take possession? And the people who are running the scheme have no rules regarding delivery failure? I mean WTF? Where is the CFTC? Where is the press.

If any CAFÉ members are lawyers or know a good lawyer who is familiar with these issues I would like to hear from them. This is the weak underbelly folks. Jim Sinclair and others are right. Buy a COMEX metals contract and take delivery. I suspect that if enough of us do this they are going to have a problem.
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Speaking of the CFTC, Commissioner Bart Chilton is maintaining his visibility as he was on CNBC this afternoon…


Chilton expressed preference for one regulator (preferably him) rather than the current hodge podge, (CFTC, SEC etc)and suggested he could use 150 more staff. On the BIG issue of massive shorts both he and the Muppett skirted around it; they seemed to acknowledge that the possibility existed and that giant players could distort the market, and that it would be undesirable, and that a regulator would need to delve into corporate books to ferret it out, but no one asked the obvious question –" is it happening now, and Mr Chilton can you give us an example, or name names??".

Was the omission of the BIG question deliberate? You gotta wonder. But the big shorts might now be feeling less comfortable today.