In this week’s ‘Days to Cover’ chart, the Big 4 traders are short about 101 days of world silver production, down 8 days from last week’s COT Report. The ‘5 through 8’ large traders are short an additional 50 days of world silver production, down 2 days from last Friday’s report, for a total of about 151 days that the Big 8 are short — and down 10 days from last week’s COT Report.
[Note: As you know, there’s one Managed Money trader in each of the Big 4 and Big ‘5 through 8’ categories — and Ted is mulling over the possibility that there might now be two Managed Money traders in the Big ‘5 through 8’ category. This fact distorts the numbers you see below, and the distortions in silver are now so great, that I’m not going to bother doing any calculations…just approximations.]
That 151 days that the Big 8 traders are short, represents five months of world silver production, or 346.2 million troy ounces of paper silver held short by these eight traders…two of which are Managed Money traders.
When talking to Ted yesterday, he was of the opinion that, after subtracting out the positions of the two Managed Money traders, the Big 4 are short around 32,000 COMEX contracts — and the Big ‘5 through 8’ are short another 17,000 contracts on top of that.
Converting those numbers to days of world silver production produced radically different numbers….about 75 days for the Big 4 — and 114 days of world silver production for the Big 8.
These are monstrously lower than the 101 and 151 days shows in Nick’s graph further up — and for that reason in silver, it’s red and green bars can be disregarded.
As for Ted’s raptors in silver, I’m assuming that they added to their long positions by a bit during this past reporting week — and as I said further up, I suspect that their long position is now a bit north of 200 million troy ounces…a monstrous number.
The Big 8 traders are short 46.3 percent of the entire open interest in silver in the COMEX futures market, which is down a decent amount from the 51.0 percent they were short in the last COT report. And once whatever market-neutral spread trades are subtracted out, that percentage would be a bit above the 50 percent mark. In gold, it’s 40.8 percent of the total COMEX open interest that the Big 8 are short, down a tiny bit from the 41.4 percent they were short in last Friday’s COT Report — and a bit over the 45 percent mark once their market-neutral spread trades are subtracted out.
In gold, the Big 4 are short 41 days of world gold production, unchanged from last Friday’s COT Report — and unchanged from the week before as well. The ‘5 through 8’ are short 27 days of world production, down 1 day from last week…for a total of 68 days of world gold production held short by the Big 8 — and obviously down 1 day from last Friday’s COT Report. Based on these numbers, the Big 4 in gold hold about 60 percent of the total short position held by the Big 8…and up 1 day from last Friday’s COT Report. This is the fourth week in a row that the Big 8 haven’t done much in gold — and that fact is equally obvious in yesterday’s Bank Participation Report.
And because of the most likely entrance of a Managed Money trader into the Big 4 short category, these numbers are off a bit as well…but only by a day or two at the most — and nothing like the numbers in silver.
But the fact that the Big 8 traders in gold, which includes the bullion banks, haven’t done much for the last month, despite the big engineered price decline in that precious metal, is something that I find rather incongruous…to say the least.
The “concentrated short position within a concentrated short position” in silver, platinum and palladium held by the Big 4 commercial traders are about 67, 71 and 60 percent respectively of the short positions held by the Big 8…the red and green bars on the above chart. Silver is down about 1 percentage point from last week…platinum is down 5 percentage points from a week ago. Palladium is down 7 percentage points week-over-week.
The above silver number, plus a tiny bit in gold are not quite accurate because of the involvement of the Managed Money traders in both…but close enough for our purposes.
The Big 4/8 traders are still sitting there like a lump in gold and silver, but both have grown smaller over the last month and a bit — and they took another big hit this past reporting week, as Ted reported that the Big 4 shorts in silver were super aggressive in their short covering for the second week in a row. They were most likely even more aggressive than the COT Report states, but how much more aggressive is up in the air because the Big 8 shorts are no longer all commercial traders…contaminated by those two Managed Money traders in their midst. Based on that fact, it’s impossible to precisely tell how well they made out…but it was a lot once again.
As I keep pointing out in this spot every Saturday, the circumstances in silver have been altered by an unimaginable [and monstrously bullish] amount by Ted’s discovery of the 1 billion troy ounce physical short position in silver that Bank of America holds in the OTC market…along with the big increase in Goldman’s derivatives position in silver in that market, as shown in the latest OCC Report for Q1/2022…which Ted figures is a long position.
The new OCC Derivatives Report for Q1/2022 was posted about two weeks or so ago — and Ted had a lot to say about it in the public domain at that time — and that’s linked
here.
But despite these improvements mentioned above, the situation regarding the Big 4/8 commercial shorts in silver, gold [and in platinum for those commercials in the Producer/Merchant category] continues to be far beyond obscene, twisted and grotesque — and as Ted correctly points out ad nauseam, its resolution will be the sole determinant of precious metal prices going forward…with that resolution getting closer with each passing week.
As always, nothing else matters.