There are 118 open silver contracts in the May contract (the Comex website shows 119, but our futures broker said the number is 118). This is an unusually high amount given that today is last trading day, tomorrow is last notice for delivery day and Friday is last delivery day. We are still waiting for notice on our 1 measly contract. Our broker, RJ O'Brien, said that there's "chatter" in his back office that we may see cash settlement offers by the end of the day today. Apparently the bottleneck in delivery is with HSBC. This could get interesting and may be why silver is strong relative to gold today. I just noticed that spot and July silver are trading at parity right now, after having been in slight contango (spot trading below the futures prices, which is how a healthy, normal futures market functions) for the past few weeks.

This experience with the Comex reinforces my belief that the reported gold and silver inventory on the Comex is fraudulent and, even more so, that the reported inventory with GLD and SLV are completely fraudulent. I can not believe some of the big holders of GLD like John Paulson or Greenlight Capital do not hold GLD accountable. GLD will be the next Enron/AIG.

This is in keeping with my post yesterday regarding the stress in the silver market. I am watching closley to see how any delivery requests are handled.