COMEX Warehouse Stocks January 25, 2010

SILVER

53,310 ozs withdrawn from the dealer’s (registered) inventory
365,151 ozs withdrawn from the customer (eligible) inventory
Total dealer inventory 47.40 Mozs
Total customer inventory 65.21 Mozs
Combined Total 112.61 Mozs

GOLD

6,100 ozs deposited in the dealers (registered) category
2,371 ozs deposited in the customer (eligible) category
Total dealer inventory 1.80 Mozs
Total customer inventory 8.10 Mozs
Combined Total 9.90 Mozs

There were only minor movements of gold in the dealer and customer inventory. There were 0.37 Mozs of silver withdrawn from the customer inventory. The dealer inventory of silver is getting noticeably small.

There were 20 delivery notices issued in the JAN gold contract. The JAN gold contract total for the month is 2,828 notices or 282,800 ozs.

There were 3 delivery notice issued in the JAN silver contract. The total delivery notices for the month in silver stand at 289 or 1.44 Mozs.

The OI in the JAN gold contract is 80. The OI in JAN Silver contract is 5.

There is 0.3 cent of contango in silver JAN/FEB contracts and 1.4 cents contango JAN/MAR contracts. The contango in gold JAN/FEB is $0.5 and $1.1 for JAN/MAR.

The Open Interest in FEB gold reduced to 171,788 contracts. There are only 3 trading days before the FEB contract is the front month. The gold open interest in the FEB contract remains very large for this point of the month.

It is the FEB option expiry on Wednesday and the last trading day of the JAN contract on Thursday. In moving gold down from $1135 to $1090 the cartel has taken at least 11,909 call option contracts out-of-the-money. Looking at the open interest in the call options their optimal price target would be $1075 which would make another 8900 contracts expire worthless. However, if gold were to go instead to $1200 then 41,399 additional call options would be in the money. This highlights what is at stake in the next few days. If we see gold trade above $1100 and start to run we will know the Cartel is in serious trouble. This week also sees Bernanke’s confirmation hearing, FOMC meeting, Geithner testifying on the AIG cover up, and the State of the Union address as well as more auctions of gob loads of Government IOU’s. There is all the motivation in the world to take gold lower. If gold refuses to yield this week it will represent a major turning point.
Cheers
Adrian