Comex: Physical Silver Demand Keeps the Market in Backwardation

The CME Comex is the Exchange where futures are traded for gold, silver, and other commodities. The CME also allows futures buyers to turn their contracts into physical metal through delivery. You can find more detail on the CME here (e.g., vault types, major/minor months, delivery explanation, historical data, etc.).

The data below looks at contract delivery where the ownership of physical metal changes hands within CME vaults. It also shows data that details the movement of metal in and out of CME vaults. It is very possible that if there is a run on the dollar, and a flight into gold, this is the data that will show early warning signs.

Gold

The chart below shows the spread between the spot price of gold and the futures contract pricing. As you can see, it blew out earlier this year (increasing contango). This created the massive arbitrage that resulted in gold traveling from London to New York. When the spread between futures and spot gets distorted, it suggests there is dis-location in the market. The spread normalized some between August and early December, but has started to blow out again. It’s possible this could lead to increased delivery volume again, but we have not seen that yet this month.