Silver Analyst Ted Butler Says It's

Nothing happened in either Far East or London trading on Thursday... and New York's action wasn't exactly the talk of the town, either. Basically, it was just "another day off the calendar"... as Ted Butler is wont to say. Gold's low was around 9:30 a.m. in London... about $1,144 spot. Gold began to rise about 15 minutes before New York opened... but this smallish rally ran out of gas at its high of the day [$1,154.90 spot] a few minutes before noon Eastern time... and that was that.

As always, silver's price action was a little more volatile. It's high of the day [around $18.17 spot] was at precisely 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong trading... and from there, got sold down to it's low [$17.91 spot] at 9:10 a.m. Eastern time. Silver recovered some of those loses as the New York session went along... but still finished down about a dime on the day.

The dollar's fall of about 40 basis points between 4 a.m. and 12 noon in New York had no visible effect on the price of either precious metal. And as I've mentioned several times... yesterday being the last... the precious metals are becoming monetized. This is the way it should be... as they are money, in and of themselves.

The shares pretty much followed the gold price yesterday... with the top for the HUI coming moments before lunchtime in New York... gold's high of the day. Not surprisingly, the shares didn't gain much... and the HUI finished up only 0.19%. But it's certainly better than the alternative.

The open interest numbers for Wednesday's big up day in gold were bad... but not as bad as I had feared. Gold open interest rose 14,453 contracts on pretty hefty volume of 176,049 contracts. And, amazingly enough, silver's o.i. was only up 871 contracts, on decent volume of 38,185 contracts. Since the open interest numbers are for Wednesday, they won't be in today's Commitment of Traders report, as the cut-off was at the end of trading on Tuesday.

The CME Delivery Report showed that 4 gold and 36 silver contracts have been put up for delivery on Monday. Most of the heavy deliveries for April gold are now behind us. As of yesterday, gold open interest for April was down to only 1,792 contracts... with only 60 left in silver. More contracts could be added between now and the end of the month, of course... but, at the moment, April already looks like it will pass into the delivery history books without incident.

The GLD added another big chunk of gold to its alleged inventory yesterday. This time it was a hefty 311,726 troy ounces... a hair under 10 tonnes. Since March 11th... 701,000 ounces of gold have been added to GLD. Of course SLV didn't add a thing yesterday. It's hard to add it when there isn't any to be had... and even the 'eligible participants' have been pulling their silver out of there hand over fist, because they can't get any, either. Don't forget that since February 26th... 9.6 million ounces has been withdrawn from SLV... at a time when it should be pouring in, but is pouring out, instead.

While on the subject of the GLD ETF... here's a Bloomberg story that Russian reader Alex Lvov brought to my attention in the wee hours of this morning. The headline reads "Bullion Held in SPDR Gold ETF Surges 0.9% to Most on Record"... and the link is here.

The U.S. Mint had another update in their one-ounce gold eagle sales yesterday. They added another 7,000... bringing their April total to 12,000. They didn't update their silver eagle sales. And the Comex-approved depositories reported that a rather large 890,968 ounces of silver were withdrawn from their collective inventories on Wednesday.

Courtesy of the usual New York gold commentator... "the European Central Bank's 'statement of condition' reported no change due to transactions in "gold and gold receivables". End. It's obvious that the ECB and it's captive central banks are no longer prepared to sell their gold... and are probably not even going to part with the portion of their reserves that are earmarked for the IMF... which are probably double counted by both entities as well.

While we're on the subject of the European Central Bank's gold holdings, they just did they're quarterly 'mark to market' on their gold reserves.... and they are now worth 19.8 billion euros more than they were on Wednesday. Here's the two paragraph Reuters story [filed from Berlin] about that very thing. It's headlined "ECB: Gold reserves up by 19.8 bln euros after revision"... and the link is here.

While we're talking about European gold... gold's price in euros set another record high price yesterday. Here's the 1-year $GOLD/$XEU graph. It's my guess that the graph for the U.S. dollar price of gold will looks something like this in the not-to-distant future.

Here's another short story that will take you less than a minute of your time. It's courtesy of Washington state reader S.A. It's a piece from The Wall Street Journal that bears the headline "Gold Prices Climb Despite Stronger Greenback". It has now become so obvious that the even the main-stream press is talking about it... and the link is here.

Here's another gold-related short story. It's another Reuters offering. This one is filed from Johannesburg... and bears the headline "South Africa gold output down 9.2% yr/yr in February". I stole this story from Kitco... and it's only two paragraphs long as well. The link is here.

Art Cashin, director of floor operations at UBS Financial Services, offered his insights to CNBC yesterday in another short commentary headlined "Art Cashin: 30-year Auction Conspiracy Theories". Cashin says that 'conspiracy theories' are running rampant amongst traders that Uncle Sam is an 'indirect buyer' of U.S. Treasuries. I'd bet some serious money, dear reader, that that is the case... and the link to this very short story is here.

Earlier this week I ran a story about China's housing and real estate bubble... and how it was about to all come crashing down. Here's another story about the same thing posted over at Bloomberg yesterday... and courtesy of Australian reader Wesley Legrand. This time it's hedge fund manager Jim Chanos saying it... again. The headline reads "China on ‘Treadmill to Hell’ Amid Bubble, Chanos Says". This is definitely worth the read... and the link is here.

Here's a story out of London's Financial Times that I lifted from yesterday's King Report. It's written by Mohamed El-Erian... chief executive and co-chief investment officer of Pimco. To give you the flavour of this article... here's the one-sentence first paragraph... "It should be apparent to all by now: despite the rhetoric out of some European capitals, the Greek rescue package is not going according to plan." That, dear reader, should come as no surprise to you... as it's certainly no surprise to me. In my Saturday column, I'll have an article about of all of Europe's debt problems... and it's an even uglier read than this one. The headline states "Why the Greek rescue isn't going to plan"... and the link is here.

Here's an interview of GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk, about GATA's disclosure at the recent hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission of an episode of manipulation of the silver market. The interview is 10 minutes long and you can find it posted at radio.goldseek.com. It's a must listen and the link is here.

Lastly, and most important... silver market analyst Ted Butler has appealed for more letters to be sent to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to urge it to enforce speculative position limits in the silver futures market. The public comment period continues until April 26th... and Butler makes it very easy for you to correspond with the CFTC by e-mail... and he even provides a sample letter for you to send. All you have to do is cut & paste, sign it... and send it. His commentary is headlined "A Time to Act"... and the link to this must read commentary is here.

The government that we gave limited power to... to protect our rights... has grown into a hideous behemoth that continually increases its power and now enslaves the people... and causes strife throughout. - Tom Parker

Well, Thursday was a 'nothing' day... but so far [5:02 a.m. Eastern time] in Far East and early London trading on Friday, things are looking more interesting. The dollar is taking a tumble... and gold and silver prices are reflecting that. Volumes aren't overly heavy, which is a good thing. Gold has traded about 20,600 contracts... and silver's volume is about 2,700 net of spreads.

I note that there was some rather interesting price activity in silver [at least according to the chart over at Kitco] the moment that Sydney opened for trading in their Friday morning... and I have no idea what it means... but whatever it was, it didn't happen on big volume. If it was important, I'm sure there will some news about it later.

So far, at least as far as I can tell, the New York bullion banks and their ilk, haven't stuck their noses into either the gold or silver market, yet... and it will be interesting to see how Comex trading goes once it opens this morning.

The CME has posted their preliminary trading volumes for Thursday. It shows that gold volume was 128,092 contracts... and silver's volume checked in at a largish 39,345 contracts, of which about 20% were spreads or roll-overs. Unless there was some spill-over from Wednesday's trading... open interest number shouldn't have risen too much... and we'll find that out later this morning.

I'm looking forward to today's precious metals trading with some interest.

Enjoy your weekend... and I'll see you on Saturday.