Trump to inspect the Treasury’s gold

It will prove difficult for the US Treasury to deflect Trump from opening its gold book, since Elon Musk and Ron Paul appear to be driving the move to come clean over national gold reserves.

Gold and silver continued to rise this week, despite the premiums on Comex futures returning to more normal levels, putting an end to arbitrage flows. In European morning trade, gold was $2927, up $46 from last Friday’s close, and silver $32.92, up 81 cents. Turnover in Comex’s gold contract was moderate, but healthier in silver.

Notably, Comex Open Interest in gold declined significantly during the market’s hiatus, shown in the next chart.

At its recent peak on 21 January, gold was $2735. Since then, OI declined, while the price rose $200. This can only have happened due to a vicious bear squeeze, panicking the shorts who are predominantly in the Swaps category. Swaps are made up mainly of bullion bank trading desks.

The next chart shows the mark-to-market position of the swaps up to 11 February, the last Commitment of Traders release: