COMEX Warehouse Stocks January 28, 2010

SILVER

ZERO ozs withdrawn from the dealer’s (registered) inventory
137,762 ozs withdrawn from the customer (eligible) inventory
Total dealer inventory 47.40 Mozs
Total customer inventory 64.72 Mozs
Combined Total 112.12 Mozs

GOLD

ZERO ozs withdrawn from the dealers (registered) category
25,059 ozs deposited in the customer (eligible) category
Total dealer inventory 1.81 Mozs
Total customer inventory 8.07 Mozs
Combined Total 9.88 Mozs

Yet another day passes and yet again no metal moved in or out of the dealers’ gold or silver inventory! There was a withdrawal of 0.14 Mozs of silver from the customers’ silver inventory.

The JAN contract is off the board. Total delivery notices issued in the JAN gold contract were 2,892 notices or 289,200 ozs.

The total delivery notices issued for the JAN contract in silver were 292 or 1.45 Mozs.

There is 1.0 cent of contango in silver FEB/MAR contracts and 3.1 cents contango FEB/MAY contracts. The contango in gold FEB/MAR is $0.7 and $01.2 for FEB/APR.

The Open Interest in FEB gold reduced to 47,946 contracts. This is as of yesterday which was the last trading day. This is of huge significance. In theory all these contracts should be fully paid for and should be standing for delivery. Of course we will not know if these holders can be persuaded to take cash settlement instead but if a large proportion are wanting physical gold this could trigger a short squeeze. The OI represents 4.7 Mozs of gold which is 160% more than what is held by the dealers. This could be a light at the end of the tunnel and could explain why gold did not break down today despite determined efforts from the Cartel.
Cheers
Adrian