COMEX Warehouse Stocks April 30, 2010

SILVER

ZERO ozs withdrawn from the dealer’s (registered) inventory
749, 586 ozs deposited in the customer (eligible) inventory
Total dealer inventory 50.25 Mozs
Total customer inventory 65.93 Mozs
Combined Total 116.18 Mozs

GOLD

4,000 ozs deposited in the dealers (registered) category
31,841 ozs deposited in the customer (eligible) category
Total dealer inventory 2.45 Mozs
Total customer inventory 7.73 Mozs
Combined Total 10.18 Mozs

Yesterday (4/29) the Comex failed to update the warehouse data. They did not do so until around 1 PM today which was just a short while before the 4/30 data was posted. Yesterday almost 1 Mozs of silver were withdrawn from the dealers’ inventory. Today there were 0.75 Mozs of silver deposited into the customer inventory. There was no movement into or out of the dealer silver inventory which stands at a very low 50 Mozs. There were only paltry movements of gold.

There were 705 delivery notices issued in the MAY gold contract. The MAY gold delivery notice total for the month is 705 notices or 70,500 ozs.

JPM issued 562 and stopped none, while Bank of Nova Scotia issued 100 and stopped 699.

There were 1796 delivery notices issued in the MAY silver contract. The total delivery notices for the month in silver stand at 1796 or 9.0 Mozs.

There is 1.4 cents of contango in silver MAY/JUN and 2.8 cents MAY/JUL. In gold there is $0.6 contango MAY/JUN and $2.0 MAY/AUG.

GS issued none and stopped 54, JPM issued 592 and stopped 744, Deutsche Bank issued none and stopped 77, HSBC issued none and stopped 80 while Bank of Nova Scotia issued 665 and stopped 368.

The open interest in silver for the MAY contract declined to 3,685 contracts. These contracts must by now be 100% paid for and are standing for delivery. This is 18.4 Mozs. This is a very large amount of silver compared to the dealer inventory of approximately 50 Mozs. It should be noted that almost 22 Mozs stood for delivery in March which according to my analysis of the Comex warehouse inventory has only been partially delivered (about 4 mozs). Provocatively, since March 1st 18 Mozs of silver have been withdrawn from the SLV. Is this where the balance for delivery obligations came from? I don’t know but it certainly is strange that the SLV should lose such a large amount of inventory when the price of silver has been rising.

Today the capping of the silver price was very obvious. There is smoke billowing out of the silver market. There are rumors of more delivery problems in silver. A short squeeze is likely very imminent.
Cheers
Adrian

Dave from Denver...

Silver deliveries

3685 silver contracts were open as of yesterday, which means the holders of those contracts were funded and prepared to take delivery. That's 18.4 million ounces vs. 50.2 million in the "registered" - available for deliver/dealer - inventory. Not enough to cause short squeeze in physical UNLESS the fractional nature of the Comex is true. Also, some of those longs could certainly elect to tender for cash or SLV settlement.

My best guess is that BNS is taking physical delivery in order meet the demands of investors who watched the GATA/Harvey Organ events unfold.