Today’s commentary concerns the last carry trade left in the markets, i.e. gold. Gold peaked at $1032 in March this year; however, since then it has fallen steadily, trading as low as $734. While this fall has been in line with a rising USD dollar, it has also been orchestrated.
Gold has been falling in an environment of rising inflation and rising uncertainty, and I've spoken in the past about gold de-coupling from the USD correlation one day.
At this point in time we need to distinguish between different types of gold, i.e. physical gold and paper gold.
Central banks hold a lot of physical gold and it just sits there earning nothing. As we know, central banks have been pumping money into the markets for 13 months now; what has not been reported is that they have also made their holdings of gold available for lease for about 0.25% for a month.
A short seller in gold can sell spot and lease the gold from the central banks at a nominal interest rate of 0.25%. If you sell gold, you receive USD; the cost of borrowing USD is therefore 0.25% (the gold lease rate) - so as long as gold doesn’t go up it is a cheap source of funding.
The central banks don’t mind this, especially when they want the USD up and as a rule they always want gold to fall. A falling gold price is a sign that everything is ok.
However, as you can imagine this is a time bomb because they are leasing physical gold to a paper gold market. At some point in time paper gold will not trade the same way as physical gold.
The demand for physical gold is the highest it has been for years, and this is the problem. Without the paper gold carry trade, you could argue that gold would be a few thousand dollars higher right now.
All is not well in the paper gold market. And this is a sign of an impending big rally in gold.
Lease rates have been skyrocketing over the past month. For the past six years, the 1 Month Gold Forward Lease Rate has chopped about at levels below 0.25 percent. Higher volatility over the past year has seen the rate move as high as 0.5 percent, but only in recent weeks have we seen rates greater than 2.5 percent (see chart below).
click to enlarge
On a global scale, the gold market is unregulated and opaque. No one really knows the size of the worldwide short position in gold, but it exists and it is large (at least 10,000 tonnes). Unlike financial markets, there are few rules and regulations on selling gold short. For years, a dark pool of short sales is believed to have been suppressing the natural ascent of gold prices.
The current spike in gold lease rates indicates that demand for physical gold is extremely high and growing quickly. We may well be witnessing the first seeds of the gold price breaking free from the short sellers and the end (death) of the gold carry trade, which so many bullion banks made such large profits on in the 1990's.
The lease rates (available on TheBullionDesk.com) will be the key indicator to watch. If the short sellers in the gold market cannot afford to roll over their positions, they will be forced to close out their trades by buying gold. This could be one potential catalyst (there are many others) that sparks a major gold rally in the months ahead.
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This article has 37 comments:
- p80
- 2 Comments
Oct 12 07:15 AMWhy are lease rates high? The lease rate is the US LIBOR minus the gold forward. Libor is crazy volatile and unrepresentative of the real USD deposit market at the moment because of the turbulence and uncertainty of current financial markets. In particular the variance between overnight fed funds, overnight LIBOR and 1, 2 and 3 month LIBOR. The gold forward is also crazy volatile and bid offer spreads have widened from 10 bp to 50 bp. The gold forwards in the 1 month term are representative of where gold traders actually finance themselves. So the gold forward is moving with the short term finance rate. The divergence between the short term finance rate (overnight USD) and the medium term finance rate (1, 2, and 3 month LIBOR) is showing up in the theoretical gold lease rate. When the 3 month LIBOR rate comes back in line with the fed funds rate the gold lease rate will fall back to zero. Look at the gold forward 1mth is 2.50/3.0%, what is over night USD rate, 1.75%. so on that basis the gold lease is negative. But on the 1mth Libor basis, where 1mth Libor is 4.50%, then the gold lease is 1.50/2.00%... does that mean anything about gold potential to rally. No, the most likely thing is the gold miners panic because all other commodity prices have collapsed and the potential for the gold price to fall is becoming more real, so you might find the gold miners sell their potential future production and push the gold price back down to long term average levels, to do this the gold miners have to borrow gold, so they will push the gold lease up even further, but will it be in the 1mth? No it will be in the 2 and 3 year lease rate.
- Alan Brochstein
- 301 Comments
My Website
Oct 12 09:20 AMThe comment above mentions the spike in Libor, and that resonates with me as a potential explanatory factor. Before I read his comment, the thought, which p80 expressed so much better than I would have, entered my mind. By the way, the fall in gold preceded the turn in the dollar significantly. Gold peaked early in the year, while the dollar actually continued to erode. I believe that the dollar was valued at 1.52-1.54 in early March as gold was ringing the $1000 bell (that brought in supply in the form of people all around the world melting their gold). While oil continued to rise from the levels of just above $100, gold did nothing over the next few months. The euro continued to appreciate, peaking in July at 1.60ish concurrent with oil near 150. In other words, gold peaked 4 months early and flat-lined while the dollar weakened further and oil increased 40+%. Maybe oil is the new gold...
- Facts
- 3 Comments
Oct 12 09:42 AMThe reason Gold futures aren't in backwardation right now is due to high Libor rates. The Gold carry trade still generates a positive return.
Lets look at a 3 month term:
Libor = 4.8
Gold Lease = 2.5
Gold Forward rate = Libor - Lease = 2.3
So you make 2.3% in 3 months being short Gold assuming Gold prices remain unchanged. The Futures contracts reflect this pretty closely.
- Alan Brochstein
- 301 Comments
My Website
Oct 12 10:23 AM- paultaut
- 1111 Comments
Oct 12 11:33 AMNeither of them can be created willnilly as is the Case of the Dollar currently. When the chickens come home to roost, they will find a burning hen house. The world is awash in dollars, more so every day. All it will take is a few small emerging market nations to sell their dollar reserves to bolster the purchasing power of their own currencies ie. prevent inflation.
- xxconfidentialxx
- 2 Comments
Oct 12 01:31 PMit is not gold producers who are holding positions on the COMEX
and gold production costs are largely imbedded and coming down it is probable that there is an opportunity for producers to earn significatly increase margins as well.
What is clear, is unlike what a forward or future market is supposed to be, the COMEX is not reflective of reality on the physical demand side of precious metals. Unhedged, wholesale bullion is not being sold anywhere near COMEX financial prices and in most cases, much higher.
It is not the lease rate that matters, it is the spread dealers are asking for that matters on physical gold.
give your head a shake
A vey nice attempt to end run reality however.
- User 50674
- 6 Comments
Oct 12 01:38 PM- Maven
- 9 Comments
Oct 12 02:18 PM- cheapybob
- 22 Comments
Oct 12 03:10 PM- Eddie Beer
- 2 Comments
Oct 12 03:30 PMThe way I see it, at this time most investors are fleeing all markets and are heading into cash and government bonds/treasuries because in their belief system safety and value lies there. There is a lag time between all the debt paper being pumped into the system by the central banks and that liquidity showing up as inflation. ( Because of this the fed can get away with confusing the masses with CPI and other bogus indicators that do not show the true state and cause of inflation). Also most of that value sold down from ( in some cases) very valuable assets gets wiped out as it travels from stocks to bonds which then are devalued by inflation.
Because of clever manipulations of gold swaps and leases and other paper games and in some cases even outright sales of physical gold by governments that are desperately trying to keep the right to print money, most people are unaware or still not convinced of the value of the precious metals and don't consider paper to be just that paper... yet.
As investors sell all stocks/commodities and buy government promises it makes companies that sell those stocks/commodities weaker (deflation) and pumps up the value of the currencies in which the investors park the proceeds of their sales (inflation). This causes the price of the sold stocks/commodities to fall and the currencies to get stronger. The dollar and euro etc. bubbles just got fantasticaly bigger. As in trillions.
This crisis will go a long way to show those that have eyes to see which way the wind blows. Personally, I believe that while this crisis will be drawn out and brutal, it will be papered over and a seeming state of normalcy will return. A warning for those that are aware. When all that paper finally does catch fire it will be a true 'bonfire of the vanities'. I'm sticking to things real where and as much as I can. Best of luck!!
- secmaven
- 178 Comments
Oct 12 04:27 PM- Spenser
- 1 Comment
Oct 12 05:57 PM- leonid breshnev
- 9 Comments
Oct 12 06:18 PM- p80
- 2 Comments
Oct 12 06:31 PMGold lease is not independently derived. People trade the gold forward, the gold lease is implied. The gold forward trades in the market, OTC swap market, or COMEX, they are more or less the same rate, save for bid offer and the London to New York spread. However, every one faces a different USD rate. Good luck trying to trade at LIBOR. However, if you can trade at LIBOR then the gold lease is LIBOR – Gold Forward. But if you’re actually USD funding rate is something different from LIBOR then the gold lease = your USD funding rate % A/360 – the Gold forward % A/360. At the moment the discrepancy between USD funding rates between different punters in the market is massive and very volatile. You also have to remember that the GOFO fixing is a bid rate, the offer is much higher. Gold forward bid offer spreads are about 50bp between banks, customers are seeing more like 1% bid offer on the forwards. So when you have GOFO fixing bid, with massive bid offer spreads, and you have LIBOR as an offer rate, where LIBOR rates are volatile and spreads are wide too, then naturally you will get what looks like a massive high lease rate. Lease rates are high, but not that high. Depends, if you want to borrow it then its high, if you want to lend it then its low.
However, it is true, there is unprecedented physical demand for gold at the moment, which is putting a little bit of a squeeze on the front end lease rates, but nothing silly. Overnight gold and tom next gold swaps are still trading around USD cash rates most days.
It is also true, central banks are lending less, and some CBs are not renewing their deposits. This is not some conspiracy, it’s because they are not comfortable in the current environment with lending unsecured gold for any term to banks over which they have no legislative power. They will lend it again when things calm down and they want to try generating a return on their otherwise expensive gold to keep in vaults. In the mean time everyone who is buying gold on forward contracts is implicitly lending it. It just takes a bit of time for gold to be moved around between the different systems, eventually there is enough for the people who want it, since most of the gold that has ever been dug out of the ground is still around in vaults gathering dust.
Central banks stopping or reducing gold sales? Not likely. Might slow down a bit, but don’t think there will be a large fundamental change in their sales programs. There may even be increases to finance this massive bail out! And central banks selling gold doesn’t increase their USD reserves. They just switch to whatever currency they want to hold it in. Sell gold get USD, sell USD get EURs, or JPY or AUD or whatever.
Why are commodity prices falling, because inflated prices have encouraged a massive increase in production which is coming on stream at a time when global growth in demand for commodities is expected to slow. Plus all the leveraged commodity longs are getting margined called and stopped out, like silver on Friday night! Ooops, wonder who that was selling it down 20% after the close.
Why is the physical gold priced different from comex or the London spot market? Because physical dealers can get away with charging massive premiums because so many punters are prepared to pay the premium because they don’t really know where the price of gold is, especially when it has 100$ range like on Friday...
enjoy
- The Sane Investor
- 9 Comments
My Website
Oct 12 09:05 PM(1) In a financial crisis and recession, shorting gold for financing represents an almost exponential amount of risk, since you´re shorting something that performs very well (theoretically) in a recession because it´s a store of value. Also, you would typically use this financing to buy much higher yielding debt, and during a financial crisis the risk of this debt defaulting goes up. Thus, you have gold going up in value and the value of your bond going down if things get worse, and that represents a very large amount of risk, since you could theoretically be out an infinite amount of money if gold went up in value an infinite amount (that would never happen, but it´s what could happen theoretically).
(2) The yen has been going up in value since people have been exiting carry trade investments made from japanese debt to reduce their overall risk exposure. Although the interest rate is higher on japanese debt than the lease rate of gold, you could only lose a finite amount of money, since you´re limited by the terms of your contractual obligation (you can only lose the value of the investment plus the super low interest rate if your carry trade investment defaulted). Thus, the risk is much higher with a gold carry trade at this point than with japanese debt. If people are trying to lower there risk by exiting japanese carry trades, shouldn´t they be falling over themselves to exit gold carry trades?
(3) A gold carry trade would really only make a lot of sense during a bull market, since the value of gold would be expected to go down and the market rate for bond yields would be higher as more people would be pouring their money in to equity investments. Thus, you could make a lot of money if the value of gold went down while you were leasing it, the lease rate stayed at 0.25%, and the yield on the bond you had was pretty high.
(4) You mention: ´Without the paper gold carry trade, you could argue that gold would be a few thousand dollars higher right now.´ This trully doesn´t make any sense, because if that was the case, what´s to keep someone from buying a future and holding on to it for delivery? You could then buy that gold at $850 an ounce, and sell it at $3,000 an ounce (according to your statement). That represents over a 200% return. Don´t you think if that was the case more people would be doing that? Hedge funds could make a quarter on trades like that. It´s called arbitrage, and experience indicates that if people can make money from doing nothing, they will.
- bearfund
- 506 Comments
Oct 13 12:46 AMWhile this scenario is certainly possible, there is no reason to think it could come to pass any time soon, and even less reason to believe a financial meltdown could trigger it. So I think you're safe here. A greater danger is that the effective value of gold (i.e., what goods and services you can exchange it for) declines due to government confiscation. Since keeping or trading gold would be a crime, many people would be unwilling to accept it. The real value of gold would not be affected (i.e., in other countries it would buy the same goods and services it always has) but you would not be able to capture that value.
- paultaut
- 1111 Comments
Oct 13 01:12 AMIn the 1920s, the Printing presses went to work in Germany in an attempt to jump start their economy in the aftermath of WW1. All it led to was Hyperinflation.
I really don't see a big difference as the Printing presses go into overdrive in the Developed world to prevent a monetary crisis.
Think about it, we rapidly increase the amount of money to stabilize money. If gold could be created the same way, it wouldn't be worth much in the Future.
When you talk about ETFs for Gold, you are talking about paper certificates issued by a corporation. Is the actual physical bullion really there? Why does anyone believe that this corporation is different from others who have hidden material facts.
My wife gets an article of jewelry every once in a while. Either gold or white gold (as a silver lookalike). She gives me a gold ring once in a while, preferably with Gold Coral in the mount, 18ct. is the ideal.
She likes the Jewelry aspect, I like the investment aspect.
- Someone1111
- 1 Comment
Oct 13 05:08 AMThe central banks can ‘print’ as much money as they want, but when no one will borrow/take it and loan it into circulation it doesn't matter… You can't get fiat money into circulation any other way.
Money and credit are being destroyed at a faster pace then the central banks can push new money back into the system.
I do believe that they will eventually try to peg the world currencies back on the gold standard (because they will have to for anyone to trust ‘money’) but until then you will want to be in a deflating fiat currency.
I expect gold to fall to at least $200 before that happens.
- Whidbey
- 771 Comments
Oct 13 11:59 AMThe post is likely a close approach to the way events unfold if you skip the wild story of a dark pool short, and it suggests that gold gets more valuable over time. That is highly probable and that is the message.
- Richard Fields
- 2 Comments
Oct 13 12:21 PM- Richard Fields
- 2 Comments
Oct 13 12:22 PM- The Sane Investor
- 9 Comments
My Website
Oct 13 12:35 PM- v8hemihead
- 4 Comments
Oct 13 01:51 PM- theaphelion
- 1 Comment
Oct 13 05:46 PMIt is expensive to sink a mine shaft, it is expensive to dig out gold, it is expensive to crush the ore, it is expensive to extract the Gold, it is expensive to treat the waist and rehabilitate the ground. Many man hours involved. This cost my friends is the inherent value in Gold, the break even cost of the mine. If this cost is not recovered the mine is closed. Less mines results in less gold whereby, supply and demand keeps the price above this cost level. That is the value of physical gold my friends.
Paper gold and fiat currencies without substance are pie in the sky, essoterical ideas and dreams. They can carry on producing them untill the value is zero! Not gold my friends, man hours ensure inherent value!
The sub prime market and the discounting of paper loans with gearing being laid off like a book maker lays off a bad debt at the races is bound to come to naught. There is no fundamental value (very little man hours to produce paper) and we all know that there are no free lunches. Central banks are starting to realize this and the sub prime debacle has proved this. The next bubble to burst is when the short holders of gold start to run for cover and there is insufficient or a shortage of the physical metal. A small amount of Gold gets used in industry a fairly large amount in jewelry which is usually kept and not scrapped. The Chindra syndrome my friends is ensuring an ever increasing amount of jewelry is taken from the gold supply as these countries become more wealthy. The exchange traded funds who are taking an ever increasing amount of Gold from the market makes the supply even shorter. They have to by law ensure that physical gold is stored in the vaults to cover the fund sales. I ask you, would you rather have $840 or an ounce of gold right now? The inherent value of the cost of producing that ounce ensures through supply and demand that it will always be worth those man hours that are spent in producing it.
Regards
Theaphelion
- Keer-eh Khar
- 39 Comments
Oct 13 06:10 PM- Bron
- 40 Comments
My Website
Oct 14 12:46 AMI expected better analysis from fatprophets, given they have been bullish on gold for a long time.
Lease rates or foward rates, which drives which, doesn't matter they are both sides of the same (gold) coin.
- Russian Bull
- 15 Comments
My Website
Oct 14 10:24 AMBesides, you can always show it off to your date. Drop an ounce of gold into a girl's hand and watch her eyes light up. Cheap thrills, yes, I know, but it beats the hell out hiding in your basement, eating MREs and waiting for the world to end.
- Keer-eh Khar
- 39 Comments
Oct 14 12:42 PM- CLH
- 618 Comments
Oct 14 02:07 PM- Chris B
- 357 Comments
Oct 14 02:32 PMRegarding the argument by theaphelion that the value of gold is set by the cost of extracting it - was it any cheaper to extract gold in 1984 than it was in 1981? If I drill an oil well and my cost of production is $100/barrel does that mean oil is automatically worth $100/barrel? The markets disagree, and marginal production facilities are shut down and restarted all the time in response to price fluctuations. Their added supply shortly after price increases is part of what pushes prices back down.
- huskerbob
- 53 Comments
Oct 14 07:08 PMGold has done its job as a store of value, keeping up with inflation. Most physical gold buying is not spurred by speculation (futures are preferred for that purpose) but because people recognize that property of gold. Gold can go down, but not to the extent that, say, a share of Lehman Bros or a paper dollar can. The value of a dollar has declined 97% in less than 100 years. Unlimited dollars are now being made available. Is that a desireable quality in a store of value? Jim Rogers has seen it all before and says that we are creating "a hyperinflationary holocaust".
- silkwood
- 1 Comment
Oct 14 08:44 PMGetting back to my school economics,
Price x Quantity of goods = Money in circulation x Velocity, well tested and proven in Zimbabwe etc.
In most of the world economy at present velocity is very low with constipated banking sector hoarding to meet unknown CDS liabilities etc, but M is increasing by the trillions very quickly as money is printed.
When V resumes, and if Q stays the same [ or in fact reduces as producers go out of business ] seems to me P has to race away, soon, THEN look out for hyperinflation, and buy gold.
- Berto
- 1 Comment
My Website
Oct 14 10:28 PMwww.mikeroberto.com/20.../
Please add any thoughts or comments.
Berto
(PS - I have a personal feeling that it will dip a bit when it gets sold off as people/funds dig for cash, and think low $700s will be the next entry point. But who knows, I’ve been wrong before!)
- Keer-eh Khar
- 39 Comments
Oct 14 11:01 PMGold elevator up will by-pass Dow Jones elevator down at 3000...
Gold elevator up will by-pass Dow Jones elevator down at 3000...
- Chris B
- 357 Comments
Oct 15 10:20 AMExactl