The CME final for Wednesday indicates that on volume of 267,728, 12.68% above estimate, open interest hardly changed – down 267 lots (0.83 tonnes) to 579,491 contracts.
Since gold was pounded by heavy selling yesterday- down $28 or 2.3% at its low – the absence of net liquidation has to mean very substantial short selling.
The early European sell-off this morning may well have been of the same character.
A big increase in shorts opens the possibility of a V-shaped recovery when the key physical markets respond – or some Hero emerges in New York.
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Waves of selling hit gold on Wednesday in the European and NY midmornings. As noted earlier, apparent CME volume pre-open was 90,000 lots, and estimated volume between 9AM and Noon NY, during which time gold dropped some $21, was a heavy 95,000 lots. ScotiaMocatta simply refers to gold being "bludgeoned down" and Reuters quotes a COMEX gold floor trader:
"the big banks just put in sell orders that hit the market,"
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U.S. Treasuries prices jumped after the government reported that U.S. jobless claims jumped last week, contrary to expectations for a small decline.
Benchmark 10-year notes climbed a full point, doubling their early advance of 16/32. Their yields fell to 3.27 percent -- its lowest since Dec 1, 2009 -- from 3.38 percent on Wednesday.
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Credit agency Dun & Bradstreet has delivered a blunt warning to SMEs about the patchy state of the economic recovery, warning it downgraded the risk profiles of a staggering 80,000 firms during the March quarter – a greater number of firms than were downgraded during the first quarter of 2009.
D&B now has 36,000 firms rated as being at "high risk" failure over the next 12 months, with the majority of those being smaller and young firms (less than four years of operation).
D&B's director of corporate affairs Damian Karmelich, says the spike in risk downgrades is particularly worrying when compared to last year, when the economy was performing much worse.
In the March quarter of 2009 – when the global economy was facing the greatest crisis in 70 years – D&B downgraded 65,000 firms, far less than the 80,000 downgraded in the first three months of 2010.
"It's a real sign that risk remains and companies can't just look at the macroeconomic numbers and think that happy days are here again."…
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/cashflow/20100520-36-000-firm
s-at-high-risk-of-collapse-dun-bradstreet.html
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"As Peter Grandich says, Nadler (along with Kaplan) has the worst track record regarding gold in the world."

Haven't you forgotten Bob Prechter. When Gold fell in 2003 from $389 to $322 he said his target was $100.
And his track record hasn't improved any since then.
Cheers, Ed Wener

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No gold moved into or out of the dealer inventory but 64,000 ozs were deposited in the customer inventory. In silver 0.2 Mozs were transferred by an internal ‘adjustment” from the dealer inventory to the customer inventory. This is a small movement compared to the 21 Mozs of delivery notices issued this month. There is no sign that any significant metal deliveries have been made yet.
There were 15 delivery notices issued in the MAY gold contract. The MAY gold delivery notice total for the month is 1,584 notices or 158,400 ozs.
There were 2 delivery notices issued in the MAY silver contract. The total delivery notices for the month in silver stand at 4,138 or 20.7 Mozs.
There is 0.8 cents of contango in silver MAY/JUN and 2.1 cents MAY/JUL. In gold there is $0.8 contango MAY/JUN and $1.5 MAY/JUL.
The open interest in silver for the MAY contract declined to 119 contracts. This is 0.6 Mozs which coupled with the already issued delivery notices puts the total likely demand for silver delivery for the month at 21.3 Mozs. That represents 40% of the dealer inventory of approximately 52.8 Mozs.
Cheers
Adrian