Tummy Tuesday

In what has become a habit/necessity of late, just another quick post for you today.

This getting old stuff sure stinks. Today, MrsF is having her first colonoscopy. Lucky her, huh? I had my first several years ago but I don't recall the preparation being so difficult. At any rate, I'll be taking her in later this morning so there is little time to waste.

We didn't talk much about Cyprus yesterday. For one, I wanted to give it a day to settle and I also knew that, if you really wanted to hear what I thought, you could just listen to the Dr Janda interview from Sunday. Now that we've had a day to digest things a bit (no pun intended, MrsF), it seems that things aren't quite as neat and clean as the financial media would want you to believe.

First of all, nothing can be done at this point to restore the confidence that has been lost. Regardless of whether Cyprus is a "template" for future bankruptcies, who in their mind doesn't think that it is exactly that? And, more importantly, who in their right mind is keeping large deposits at major financial institutions in Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or Portugal or...anywhere, for that matter. You'd have to be:

Head-in-the-sand stupid OR
Bat-shit crazy

I mean, seriously. Now that it's been proven that accounts are subject to seizure and confiscation, why on earth would you keep money within that system? Ultimately searching for a store of value with no counterparty risk, the flow of fiat being converted into physical metal will only continue to increase.

And then there's this: It ain't over. Not by a longshot. First, read this from ZH where they report that the windows were left open for funds to be drained from Cypriot banks all last week: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-25/have-russians-already-quietly-withdrawn-all-their-cash-cyprus Which was based upon this: https://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/eurozone-cyprus-muddle-idUSL5N0CG13920130325

Not even the European Monetary Magicians can create a "haircut" when there is no "hair" to be "cut". So, today, we have this: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-26/cyprus-last-remaining-big-bank-set-unexpected-liquidation

Again, I hope you haven't been fooled by the SPIN and he MOPE. This is not a one-off. This is not in any way similar to a failure at The First National Bank of Bumfuck Idaho, where the FDIC sails in and makes accounts whole and then sells the banks assets to the United Bank of Bumfuck. The ramifications are, and will continue to be, significant and devastating to the future of the EU, the Euro and the banking system as a whole. Have you bought any physical metal today?

Prices continue rangebound for now and, as stated yesterday, will likely stay that way for the rest of this week, albeit with plenty of volatility. As we head toward FND for the April13, keep in mind that:

13,910 contracts stood for delivery during the last "delivery month" of Feb13. This was up from 4,623 in Dec12, 5,178 in Oct12 and 5,807 in Aug12.
Harvey Organ has been keeping track of the demand that has materialized for delivery in the "non-delivery" month of March13. Last night, he reported that a total of 13.22 mts have been delivered in March. That's 425,000 ounces or the equivalent of 4,250 Comex contracts. IN A NON-DELIVERY MONTH! https://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/
If Harvey is accurate, then we've seen nearly as much Comex delivery demand in March as we saw in December, a month that is typically one of the largest deliveries of the year.
And if Harvey is accurate about March and, knowing what we know about February, how many contracts are going to stand for delivery in April?
As of Friday, the total open interest for the April13 was still 121,902. It's of course going to come down. A lot. But, how much? We'll see...

Here's a gold chart for you. Not much to look at but it appears that, as long as price hovers above $1585, there's always a possibility for a spike toward $1615. And remember, nothing significant will have happened until you see price back above $1626. Everything else is just noise.

On the flip side, though silver has now been rangebound for over a month, bored Turdites may see the opportunity for a trade in these silver charts. Whether you're looking at the past month, the past three weeks or just the last six days, it's quite obvious that silver is catching a bid (could it be our old-reliable BoS?) every time price reaches down to $28.60.