Turnover and Fractional Memes
I recently listened to an interview between Eric Sprott and Chris Martenson. Eric has a very good line in spin playing to the themes beloved by the 'bugs. Deconstructing them requires more time than I have at the moment, but this comment I can't leave:
"... I think all the paper markets are a joke. As you are probably aware, we trade a billion ounces of silver a day. A billion ounces. The world produces 900 million a year."
There are many falsehoods in the precious metal commentary "market" but I'm surprised Eric is supporting the idea that large turnover figures are suspicious, which I debunked in this post. He should be careful supporting this meme as it can just as easily apply to his own funds, particularly his silver fund as he seems not interested in doing any secondaries (in contrast to his gold fund).
The suspicious turnover meme is often confused with fractional bullion banking, an example being this comment by The Burning Platform:
“Several competent analysts have worked the numbers (including Bill Murphy and Chris Powell of GATA), and have come to the conclusion that for every ounce of silver in known inventories there are approximately 100 paper contracts trading (a fractional bullion system, if you will) on various exchanges across the globe.”
My response below:
1) My understanding is that the 100:1 figure did not come from “analysis” but from a statement made by CPM Group’s Mr Christian. See here. I would be very interested in independent analysis coming to the 100:1 figure that did not rely on Mr Christian’s comment, please provide links.
2) Mr Christian’s comments were confused by many as a statement about the ratio of fractional bullion banking instead of paper to physical trading ratio, which are two completely different things. GATA’s Adrian Douglas did an analysis that concluded the fractional ratio was 4:1. That analysis had serious flaws in my opinion (see here but in the end it was too conservative, with Mr Christian confirming it is generally 10:1 (40:1 in the case of AIG).
"... I think all the paper markets are a joke. As you are probably aware, we trade a billion ounces of silver a day. A billion ounces. The world produces 900 million a year."
There are many falsehoods in the precious metal commentary "market" but I'm surprised Eric is supporting the idea that large turnover figures are suspicious, which I debunked in this post. He should be careful supporting this meme as it can just as easily apply to his own funds, particularly his silver fund as he seems not interested in doing any secondaries (in contrast to his gold fund).
The suspicious turnover meme is often confused with fractional bullion banking, an example being this comment by The Burning Platform:
“Several competent analysts have worked the numbers (including Bill Murphy and Chris Powell of GATA), and have come to the conclusion that for every ounce of silver in known inventories there are approximately 100 paper contracts trading (a fractional bullion system, if you will) on various exchanges across the globe.”
My response below:
1) My understanding is that the 100:1 figure did not come from “analysis” but from a statement made by CPM Group’s Mr Christian. See here. I would be very interested in independent analysis coming to the 100:1 figure that did not rely on Mr Christian’s comment, please provide links.
2) Mr Christian’s comments were confused by many as a statement about the ratio of fractional bullion banking instead of paper to physical trading ratio, which are two completely different things. GATA’s Adrian Douglas did an analysis that concluded the fractional ratio was 4:1. That analysis had serious flaws in my opinion (see here but in the end it was too conservative, with Mr Christian confirming it is generally 10:1 (40:1 in the case of AIG).
Comments
Post a Comment