Note that this refers to Thurs trading in the US but it's still interesting in light of what happened to gold last night...
5:30a PT Friday, January 24, 2003
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
What's appended here seems awfully unusual -- an open invitation to an imminent short squeeze in the gold market, published in the Financial Times, no less.
It would be a shame to miss such a party.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
Gold strengthens further on speculative buying
By Adrienne Roberts Financial Times Friday, January 24, 2003
Gold strengthened again on Wednesday night as aggressive speculative buying set in after the US close. The metal hit a six-year high of $364.50 an ounce in Asian trade, fixing at $364.70 yesterday afternoon in London.
Jeffrey Christian at CPM Group suggested that speculators were positioning themselves to take advantage of a possible price spike caused by congestion in the New York market at the end of this month.
The February Comex futures contract becomes deliverable on January 31. Mr Christian said speculators were betting that people who sold the February contract would find it hard to get the physical gold they need to deliver against their February positions.
"They will thus want to buy offsetting February contracts while either closing out these short positions or rolling them forward into future delivery months," Mr Christian said.
He pointed out that as of January 21 there was a total of 11.2m ounces of open interest in the February Comex futures contract, compared with only 1.7m ounces of bullion stocks registered against Comex positions.
Yesterday in New York, Comex February gold futures also settled at $364.70, $4.80 or 1.3 per cent higher.
Crude oil futures lost ground after weekly data showed an unexpectedly large increase in US crude oil inventories.
Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures showed a 1.5m barrel rise in crude stocks, with the American Petroleum Institute (API) reporting a 181,000 barrel increase.
Still, the overall US fuel picture remained tight.
"Last week, the difference between total inventories and their five-year average was 37.1m barrels. This week the gap has ballooned out to 44.1m barrels," said Paul Horsnell at JP Morgan Chase.
By the close in London, March Brent was down 62 cents at $29.72 a barrel, while in New York, March WTI closed 60 cents lower at $32.25 a barrel.