slv has exceeded the amount of silver called for in its custodian agreement. this is from ed steer of casey research:

Yesterday was options expiry on the Comex for the April contract...and I believe that today is options expiry in the Over-the-Counter [OTC] market. That's one of the reasons that volume has been so heavy this week, as traders are rolling their positions out of the April contract into June, in order to avoid having to take delivery. We will find out how many gold contracts are standing for delivery in April, when first notice day rolls around next Tuesday...March 31st...the last day of the month.

The boyz didn't get the gold price down very much into this options expiry date. A lot of options expired in the money...and if these option holders wish, they can now convert their options into futures contracts and stand for delivery. It will be very interesting to see how many contracts will be in that position come Tuesday morning.

Today is also the last delivery day of the month for silver in the March contract. As of this writing, there are still about 180 contracts left to deliver...900,000 ounces. There were 99 contracts delivered yesterday...with the big issuer being Prudential Bache [98]...and there were eight different stoppers...each taking a little chunk.

Open interest changes for Wednesday's big day were as follows. Gold o.i. rose 3,028 contracts...which is not a lot considering the volume and the price action. Silver o.i. actually fell 88 contracts. Upon checking the March 25th price swings [red line] on the silver graph above, I suppose anything was possible. Unfortunately, none of this activity will be in today's Commitment of Traders report. We'll have to wait until the COT report on April 3rd for that.

In other gold and silver news, I've already covered Thursday's deliveries in silver. There were only a handful of contracts delivered in gold...and there might be a small handful delivered today as well. No changes in the U.S. Mint's gold and silver eagles numbers. The Comex silver warehouse stocks were not updated for Thursday. There were no additions to GLD yesterday, but some of the huge amount of silver that's owed to the SLV put in an appearance. The total added yesterday was 116.49 tonnes [3,745,000 ounces troy]...bringing the new record-high total up to 8,296.93 tonnes of silver. According to an e-mail I received from Gene Arensberg..."SLV has now exceeded the amount of silver foreseen in the Custodian Agreement with JPMorgan Chase, London. It currently holds 266,752,671.5 ounces. The custodian agreement was for up to 264,550,265 ounces. As of today, SLV has not filed either an amendment of the current custodian agreement or announced a new custodian or sub-custodian." Gene was also kind enough to provide an updated graph of the current holdings of the SLV ETF since its inception. I thank him for that...and the associated commentary.

click to enlarge

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