The End Of Unallocated Gold and Silver?
London (May 2) On Apr. 21, 2021, a monumental amount was removed from the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE:SLV). Speculation behind it, is a drive away from unallocated silver; particularly as SLV is not audited, and has raised a number of anomalies over the years, particularly on Feb. 2, 2021 when an unjustified and inversely proportional sell off in the silver price occurred against the backdrop of record longs.
Unallocated silver or gold is a very hot topic at the moment. The movement of the reddit crowd and the huge internet wave identifying the likes of SLV dealing in unallocated silver and paper smashing the price down has started to become common knowledge, when a few months ago, no one would have understood the difference between the two.
Bullion banks have been leasing gold from the central banks to then short it for years and years. It’s a manipulated fractional reserve market. Hypothecation has been the norm for so long for some of these players it’s like it is acceptable to just plough on as normal.
So, if you have invested in gold or silver you should hopefully know whether your investment is unallocated or allocated. If you have invested in ETFs, then you would do well to find out right now what your money is invested against.
Around 95% give or take of Gold owned—not traded—owned across the globe is unallocated gold. That is a staggering statistic.
When Basel III NSFR comes into play starting Jun. 28, 2021 unallocated gold will be extremely expensive to trade, and not worthwhile for the manipulated shorts to continue. The LBMA has kicked back because, quite frankly, they are in a mess and nowhere near able to comply with these upcoming rules, despite having had years to prepare. It is no secret the LBMA deals in mass unallocated gold and silver, and has done so for years.
There are many longwinded and deliberately confusing definitions for unallocated and allocated, so here is the simple difference: When you buy gold or silver via an unallocated account, you never actually own it. It can be leased out and it can also have several other people’s names on it.
When you buy allocated, you pay slightly more for storage costs inside a vault, however, it has your name on it. If you simply buy physical and want delivery, it sits with you in your possession. This is why there has been a drive of late to own and hold physical, because there is such little trust in the holdings across the globe of unallocated gold and silver.
Sprott Physical Silver (NYSE:PSLV) is allocated and audited. It's no surprise that PSLV has seen huge inflows of late, and the SLV [(owned by JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM)] has seen a huge outflow. But it isn’t just these.
The LBMA and the Comex—subject to mass criticism—are shedding physical gold and silver at a greater rate than has been seen for years. The internet movements have, and quite rightly so, been encouraging buying physical and plenty of it. On Apr. 30, one of the Reddit crowd bought $800,000 PSLV, so don’t think this crowd are just the average Joe buying a few ounces here and there, as this is a serious movement with serious followers.
So as the evidence shows for Comex and LBMA, with mass deliveries standing at month end and record outflows, and unallocated ETFs dropping like a stone (which the average analyst sees as bearish for precious metals—how short sighted can you be?) this is certainly a time where the manipulation of prices in the metals could be coming to an end; particularly with Basel III just around the corner.
JP Morgan has been frontrunning this for years, as they have a monumental amount of silver in their possession. The legality of how they got it, may well be coming into question very soon, with the plethora of lawsuits out against them at present. However, the physical market in gold and silver has never been stronger and it should come as no surprise to see price elevated in the coming months, not just in premiums, but in futures markets where the physical ownership will eventually hurt the manipulators.
The big question, however, is whether the derivatives of gold and silver are over. With more and more people rushing out of ETFs, and with the NSFR around the corner, who really wants to pump money into these derivatives? Such is the movement and recent evidence of outflows. I would be surprised if some of these haven't folded before too long.
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