Relevant:
- Market Panic: The Wild Hunt for 100-Ounce Gold Bars
- Vietnamese aren't only ones moving gold outside banking system
- CME Group Announces the Launch of Physically Delivered Gold Kilo Futures
- All 100 Ounce Silver Bars Likely To be Gone in a Matter of Days
- Retail Gold & Silver Demand Surged 135% since June, 365% More First-Timers
2009-03-31 — seekingalpha.com
In summary, there is now so much demand for delivery of the mini-contracts that the exchange can no longer deliver 1 kg bars. When the wording was changed, a flurry of complaints resulted. Technically, in my opinion, if you bought a mini futures contract from an NYSE-Liffe clearing member, prior to December 31st, you could bind them to their legal contract with you, and force them to either deliver the 1 kg bar, or pay for you to obtain it on the open spot market. Based upon the original wording, NYSE-Liffe and its clearing members are legally obligated to deliver that 1 kg bar per contract, whether they want to or not, and regardless of the internal rules of the exchange. Whether anyone will force compliance, however, is an open question.
Absent legal action, clearing members are now being allowed to hand out little slips of paper, called “warehouse depository receipts†(WDR). These are being substituted for “vault receipts†(VR). The WDRs, in contrast to the VRs, merely promise the customer that he owns a 1/3 interest in a 100 ounce bar. The customer is not allowed to take delivery, unless he can accumulate 3 WDRs, which equals 1 VR.
And so it begins -- the NYSE has now defaulted (in the expected sleazy, weasely, lawyerly way) on a key gold futures contract.
There has been a lot of talk, over the past year, by bearish gold commentators, claiming that the shortage of gold and silver is merely a fluke of the retail market. However, 1 kg. bars of gold are NOT a retail denomination. They are the primary unit used in most commodity futures markets. Unlike the American exchanges, the 1 kg. bar dominates deliverable contracts, for example, on the Tokyo Commodities Exchange, as well as many other commodities exchanges around the world. They were also the primary unit of the mini-gold contracts (YG), offered by NYSE-Liffe, prior to the technical default. In other words, the retail gold shortage has spread into the wholesale market. What’s next? Will there be a shortage of 100 ounce bars? No exchange rule can be used to hide from a technical default on delivery of 100 ounce bars. But, vast numbers of 100 ounce bars are stored at the iShares COMEX gold trust (IAU). So, a default in delivery of 100 ounce bars will take a while.
All that said, however, given that the Fed printing press is running overtime, things are going to get tighter. It will take only a few months of delivery percentages similar to those seen in December, 2008, before all the 100 ounce gold bars are gone. What will the futures exchanges do? Hand out little slips of paper entitling contract holders to a ¼ interests in 400 ounce banker’s bars? There is no rule that allows that. What happens when people start taking mass delivery of the 400 ounce bars? Will they hand out fractional shares in gold mines, along with picks and shovels?
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