According to the latest Commitment of Traders Report released Friday and which accounts for Comex trader positioning through Tuesday, August 21, the hedge fund net short position in Comex paper gold futures soared to an all-time high of 89,972 contracts. This represents nearly 9 million ounces of paper gold. It’s more gold than is produced by gold mines in the U.S. annually. As of Thursday, Comex vault operators reported a total of 8.4 million ounces of gold, only 282,000 of which were available for delivery. In other words, the hedge fund paper gold short position exceeds the total amount of gold in Comex vaults.
Conversely, the Comex banks are taking the other side of the massive hedge fund short bet. Given the history of extreme positioning by the hedge funds and the banks (the banks are normally short paper gold – thus a long position by the banks is considered “extreme”), it’s a safe bet that at some point in the near future gold (and silver) are set to soar. Perhaps the more interesting question would be to ask why the banks have assumed a large long position in gold. What is it that the banks “see” that has them positioned for a big move higher in the precious metals?
Meanwhile, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is the ultimate evidence that no price discovery is not possible in the U.S. stock market. In a market with true price discovery, TSLA would no longer exist. It appears as if Elon Musk was indeed under the influence of illicit psychotropic drugs when he claimed that funding was secured for a going-private transaction.
In this episode of “WTF Just Happened?” we discuss the massive hedge fund paper gold short position plus lift our leg the idea that Tesla will be around in two year (WTF Just Happened is a produced in association with Wall St. For Main Street – Eric Dubin may be reached at Facebook (NASDAQ:FB).com/EricDubin):