Precious Metals

With bond yields spiking and the dollar dumping, one might think precious metals would be bid... but that anti-status quo reality will not do and so, gold and silver (and crude oil) are tumbling faster than Sepp Blatter's reputation...

Typically, one method of MOPE that the government and the FED love to engage in is seasonally adjusting economic figures, which means that they look at the real numbers and simply re-jig them until they better fit their “models”.

Most investors have heard Kyle Bass' rather eloquent phrase, "buying gold is just buying a put against the idiocy of the political cycle. It's that simple." However, what few may remember was his warnings in 2011, suggesting the University of Texas Investment Management Co. take delivery of its gold - as opposed to trusting it in the 'safe' hands of COMEX massively levered paper warehouse. Now, as The Star Telegram reports, Texas is going one step further with State Rep. Giovanni Capriglione asking the Legislature to create a Texas Bullion Depository, where Texas could store its gold. The goal is to create a secure facility that would allow the state to bring home more than $1 billion in gold bars that are owned by UTIMCO and are now housed at HSBC in New York.

Courtesy of central planning, virtually every single capital market has become an illiquid penny stock, with wild swings from one extreme to the other, the latest example of this being the Shanghai Composite, which after soaring 10% in the past ten days, crashed 6.5% overnight tumbling 321 points to 4620 after it briefly rose just shy of 5000. This was the biggest drop since January 19 when the Composite dropped 7.7% only to blast higher ever since. Putting the "plunge" in perspective, now the SHCOMP is back to levels not seen in... one week.

Another round of the Crisis is coming and the Powers That Be know it. This is why they’re preparing by buying up Gold bullion.

If governments have proven anything to us over the last seven years, it is that they will do anything to keep the banks from going down.  If just 10% of people hit their breaking points and withdrew their money in cash - there wouldn’t be enough cash in the system to support this demand. And the banks would subsequently collapse. When a government is bankrupt, the central bank is nearly insolvent, the banking system is illiquid, and an entire population suffers from interest rates that are either negative or below the rate of inflation, capital controls are a foregone conclusion. In fact, we expect the next round of capital controls will be designed to protect the banks... from you.

“The world economy is like an ocean liner without lifeboats ...” - HSBC.
Fail to prepare ... Prepare to fail ...

Smart money continues to maintain allocations or accumulate positions. U.S. mining financier Oskar Lewnowski is preparing to launch a base and precious metals fund. The 50 year old New Yorker has already invested almost $1 billion and hired a physical metals trader to handle supply.

On a turbo-charged illiquid day ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, stocks, bonds, USD, and commodities are turmoiling after this morning's hotter-than-expected CPI print. Stocks and Bonds were instantly sold (hawkish-er signal), the USD soared (hawkish-er signal) and crude, copper, and precious metals tumbled. Fundamentally speaking of course the US Open is soon and so the algos will, we are sure, rescue one of these (or will they)... and then there's Yellen at 1ET.

“You can’t stop an idea whose time has come.”

"we're beyond the point of being able to successfully manage this... and I worry about another leg down in the economy causing social disruption."

"Gold should be a part of everybody's portfolio to some degree because... it is the alternative money. Warren Buffett is making a big mistake."

Gold topped $1230 this morning - breaking to 3-month highs and up over 4% year-to-date - up 5 days in a row for the best run in 4 months. The surge comes causally or correlatedly coincidental with China's explicit shift into extraordinary measures (LTROs) but, as The FT reports, market participants are concerned that algo-based funds have created a "frenetic liquidity" environment as everyone from real money to central banks "aren’t trading the gold market the way they used to."

The World Platinum Council do not believe that platinum stocks will be completely depleted and reach zero because the amount includes long term holdings by private investors, sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds. It said that stocks typically held in vaults, excludes ETFs.

Un-Photoshopped Reuters photo sums up US foreign policy perfectly as Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani, representing the Gulf Co-operation Council, appears to leave U.S. President Barack Obama hanging during a welcome ceremony at the White House this week.