Slowly but surely, physical supplies of gold and silver are being drained from the Comex. This has put pressure on the system. We are now seeing that pressure manifest itself in the data.
We recently reported that the Federal Reserve plans to launch a 12-week pilot program in partnership with several large commercial banks to test the feasibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The US isn’t alone in experimenting with digital currency. India is working on developing a digital rupee and recently announced the second phase of testing.
After successfully running a pilot program to test its digital currency at the wholesale level, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced it will test the digital rupee in a retail setting.
China is likely quietly stockpiling gold in a bid to further minimize its dependence on the US dollar.
Interest rate hikes get most of the attention as the Federal Reserve fights inflation, but balance sheet reduction is arguably more important. And it’s not going well.
Since the Fed stopped buying Treasuries and started letting bonds fall off its books as they mature, the bond market has experienced increasing volatility and liquidity problems. In fact, there is already talk about the possibility of the central bank abandoning quantitative tightening.
A lot of mainstream pundits concede that the US economy is heading for a recession as the Federal Reserve continues to crank up interest rates in its inflation fight. But as Peter Schiff explained in a recent podcast, there is plenty of data that indicates the economy is already in a recession.
The price analysis last month suggested that more time was needed for a sustainable rally. It concluded:
It looks like this market will turn sooner or later. Still, though, support has become resistance so the market has some work ahead of itself. Medium to long-term investors should feel very confident buying at current prices, even if the price action remains choppy in the short-term.
The collapse of the FTX crypto exchange has been in the news. As SchiffGold analyst Tony wrote, “FTX isn’t the canary in the coal mine (that was Celsius, or one of the other firms that crashed this year). FTX is the coal mine, and it just collapsed.”
Silver demand is on pace to hit record levels in 2022, driven by new highs for physical investment, industrial demand, jewelry, and silverware production, according to the Silver Institute’s Interim Silver Market Review.
Gold and silver continue to flow out of the COMEX vaults.
This analysis focuses on gold and silver within the Comex/CME futures exchange. See the article What is the Comex? for more detail. The charts and tables below specifically analyze the physical stock/inventory data at the Comex to show the physical movement of metal into and out of Comex vaults.
People in the financial media tend to talk about inflation as an academic exercise. As a result, it’s easy to forget that rising prices cause real pain for real people. And Americans are feeling that pain today. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey highlights some ways inflation is impacting regular people. He also explains why he thinks stagflation is the most likely outcome of this inflation fight.
