UPDATE: Spot Gold $1426 (from $1564 highs Friday)
As Asia opens to the bloodbath that occurred in precious metals on Friday in the US, it would appear that more than a few traders got the 'tap on the shoulder'. Shanghai futures are limit-down and spot gold and silver prices are plunging once again as we suspect forced margin-calls and the raising of cash (to cover extreme variation margin - or capital reserves) needed in JGB positions, as we explained here [7]. Liquidation is certainly the theme of the evening - investors are selling JGBs (6th day in a row of multiple-sigma moves in long-dated Japanese bonds 30Y +56bps off its post-BoJ lows at 1.60%!), selling Japanese stocks (Nikkei -128 pts, second biggest down day post-BoJ), selling US Treasuries (futures down), selling gold and silver (gold spot down over $100 from Friday's highs), and despite selling JPY early (retracing 30% of the weakness post-BoJ), JPY is practically unchanged (jerking lower only on the US futures open and Asian equity open) - it seems Mrs.Watanabe is struggling and unwinding some her excessively short JPY and long NKY positions [8].
Gold down over $100 from Friday's highs...
[9]
Which takes spot gold back to the 38.2% Fib retracement of the most recent low to high swing...
[10]
Tokyo COMEX Gold -9.2% (limit down) - looks like a giant post-BoJ roundtrip...
[11]
Silver ugly too...
[12]
Another day, another 4-sigma move in JGBs...
[13]
and post the China data...
- GDP Miss
- Retail Sales Miss
- Industrial Production Miss
- Fixed Asset Investment Miss
which stands in the face of the 'survey-driven' PMI data...
[14]
... everything is red - JGBs down, Japanese stocks down, US Stocks down, US Treasuries down, Gold and Silver down, Copper down, Oil down, Rubber futures limit down
[15]
Charts: Bloomberg