When I was in the Air Force, pucker factor refered to the feeling of tightness in your back side when, without warning, everything was going to $hit and you didn't have a lot of altitude, or fuel, or control, or runway, ... you get the picutre. Could this weeks activity by the boyz be a manifistation of pucker factor? From Midas tonight.

There was no movement of gold into or out of the COMEX in either the dealer or customer inventory. HOWEVER, there was a bombshell in the report. 512,779 ozs of gold (16 tonnes) were transferred from the dealer inventory to the customer inventory in what is reported as an “adjustment”. This is simply massive and at twice the amount of the total outstanding delivery notices for the month can not be reconciled with the monthly deliveries.

This stunning movement leaves the dealers with only 1.8 Mozs of gold which is enough for 18,000 contracts. There are still 197,322 contracts of Open Interest in the FEB contract which goes into first notice day in 4 trading days. These contracts have to be sold, rolled or fully paid for delivery by then. This is a very high OI to be held so close to first notice day especially when the price is being pummeled. Is there a high proportion that will stand for delivery? We won’t know for a few more days.

There were no delivery notices issued in the JAN gold contract. The JAN gold contract total for the month is 2,808 notices or 280,800 ozs.

There was 1 delivery notice issued in the JAN silver contract. The total delivery notices for the month in silver stand at 286 or 1.43 Mozs.

The OI in the JAN gold contract is 45. The OI in JAN Silver contract is 4.

There is 0.4 cent of contango in silver JAN/FEB contracts and 1.4 cents contango JAN/MAR contracts. The contango in gold JAN/FEB is $0.5 and $1.1 for JAN/MAR.

The Open Interest in FEB gold reduced to 197,322 contracts. There are only 4 trading days before the FEB contract is the front month. As discussed above this is a very large OI at this point of the month.