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The John Brimelow Report
ACCESSing a selling climax?
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Indian ex-duty premiums: AM $10.46, PM $13.14, with world gold at $390.40 and $389.90. Far above legal import point. An Indian correspondent informs me that some credit limits in the Indian bullion importing trade have maxed out, a measure of the steepness of acceleration in the pace of business. Holding gold below $400 is going to require a great deal of physical.
TOCOM on opening at 8PM NY time encountered world gold around $393, $4.60 below the NY close, and $6 below the previous Japanese close. Although this must have been an unpleasant development for leveraged futures players and has to have triggered liquidation, there were buyers around. In the end the active contract closed down 11 yen, virtually where it opened, and open interest slipped only 468 Comex lots, to equal 116,983 Comex. Volume surged 220% to the equivalent of 56,323 Comex lots, and world gold went out at $392.75. (NY yesterday traded 50,354 contracts; open interest fell 5,026 to 255,395.)
During the last hour of trading yesterday – long after the Comex close - gold shares staged one of their most dramatic declines in recent memory. Not coincidently, heavy selling via the ACCESS system then sent gold down very steeply, such that, as noted above, prices were far below the NY close by the time any market likely to be a net buyer had opened. Heavy activity on ACCESS, particularly selling, is always dubious. Belying its name, only a few large operators can use the system, and for much of the time the only global counterparty is the Pacific Ocean. Australia, the first overseas market to open, is of course a natural seller. Observation suggests that ACCESS is mainly used, when actively traded, to groom or guide the market in favor of pre-established positions. (An additional advantage is that European based commentators, for whom this is the middle of the night, frequently assume the prices they see in their morning are Asian, rather than US- motivated.) Most likely this was the case on Tuesday.
If the objective was create downward momentum, it failed. Gold has repeatedly bounced off $390, and looks inclined to trade above the ACCESS close. Considering the huge premiums being paid in the largest buying market, this is not a surprise.
Of course, there is a reasonable case to be made that commodities in general are seriously overbought, especially if a slow-down in China becomes pronounced. (There has been no evidence of heavy Chinese involvement in gold.) But gold tested its 200 – day moving average today, while most commodities are still way above. The huge selling which blocked the attempt to break into new high territory at the start of April also prevented a seriously over bought situation arising. Furthermore, open interest is down over 50,000 contracts from the recent high, being in fact not far from the 230-240,000 range at which it bottomed in February. These technical data support what studying the physical prices also suggest: gold is not to be lumped in as another commodity.
JB
John later reported today’s gold volume was enormous at 88,000 with 25,000 of that coming in the last half hour.