Another rough day in precious metals, and yet open interest increased in silver futures by 3903 to 173,778 and in gold by 3058 to 381,370.  This further supports the argument that actual liquidation is minor and that this is a giant synthetic paper short attack. These prices are made up at this point. Look at it as the polar opposite of the Hunt silver corner in 1979, except this time the corner is conducted by short sellers. This is historic.

– CoT will give us numbers on Friday for Tuesday but would guess that managed money or slinger gold shorts are over 90,000 contracts (45 million ounces, or 1276 tonnes), and silver 45,000. That’a a hellavua lot of gold and silver to cover in a pinch. And they have Russia, China, India, central Asian and a pick up in retail demand to contend with.

-2.39 tonnes of gold inventory left the GLD Etf.  “Inventory”, if it really exists,  is now at 769.86 tonnes.

-Total Crimex gold inventory (if it really exists) drops to 283 tonnes, 20 tonnes have been transferred out in last two weeks.

-Central Fund of Canada: trades at a stunning negative 7.9% percent to NAV. Percentage of fund in gold 60.80%,  in silver 38.70%, cash 0.7%

– Singapore starts trading in kilobars in two weeks. The contracts are 25 kilobars (32.15 oz each) and there are 5 daily contracts. All deliveries in kilobars, no synthetic market allowed.

-Barry Ritholtz is not especially known as a flamethrower. Yes, he goes on CNBC, says a few provocative things once in awhile, but mostly he is tame.  So a guy like this is a pretty good tell.  In this post he goes ballistic on the extreme market manipulations and the destruction of price discovery.  I would call this “something evil this way comes” commentary.  Besides the tell that mainstream commentators have had it, it is also a very good market assessment.