Bank of England Vault Floor Layout (updated)

The Bank of England Virtual Tour is pretty neat - specifically the 360 degree rotatable picture of the main gold vault. 'Crazy to do from a security perspective', so interesting to consider the need for transparency was greater than the need for secrecy. The website/app is great fun for anyone liking shiny things.

I wanted to explore a few additional details, create a historical record for posterity and completely debunk the 1,300 tonnes of leased gold idea before it gains too much traction in the metals space. Primarily though, the main purpose of this article is to highlight extra detail - insofar as it helps reduce the social distance between us and that big stash of gold.

The Waiting Game

I'll have an end of month post shortly, but I wanted to point out that there's been a potentially important reversal (three line break) on the weekly Dow Jones vs. $GDXJ ratio chart.

IS NEGATIVE GOFO SIGNIFICANT? (Now With A Backwardation Chart Addendum)

S. Roche alerted STFU comments’ readers last Monday, 8 July (http://screwtapefiles.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/figured-it-out.html#more) that ‘GOFO negative out to 3 months, this has meant fireworks in the past!!’ and later that it had become negative through six months.  That first observation engendered a flurry of related comments, but why?.  What is the significance of that phenomenon?  Well, to begin with, it is rare, having only occurred thrice in recorded history before this, in 1999, 2001, and 2008, and then only very transiently.  In all three instances, the price of gold went higher, sharply but very briefly in 1999, and less steeply but more protractedly on the later two occasions..

So, the still burning questions are: ‘Will history repeat (or at least rhyme)?’  Or, ‘Is it different this time?’

Figured it out

The metals charts look like death and I'd be surprised if they don't soon make new lows, but at least I've finally figured out when the next leg of the gold and silver bull market will begin. So let's get right to the opening pitch

A different view of GLD (part 1 of 4)

GM has charts sewn up nicely, but in the land of the bar list, what's new? Everyone knows about the decline in GLD inventory but not much attention is given to increases in inventory, so let's talk about it some. There were only three 'Add Events' in GLD during June 2013, with the largest add (214 bars) on the 13th June. In my bid to make the information more digestible, here is the summary as a handy info-graphic (yeah, I've got a new version of photoshop):

Sin Bin

STF Quarantined 'Sin Bin' for  Unacceptable Comments

Some time ago we posted a set of guidelines designed to help keep comments on STFU civil and constructive.  However, they have been ignored by some who have posted offensive comments, lowering the tone of the discourse on the site and even, in some cases, being personally abusive.  In future, any comments that are judged to be aggressively personal, blatantly off-topic, or even excessively simple minded will be removed from where they were posted and put in this space as examples of bad internet behavior that we deem to be unacceptable on this site.

This is indeed a form of censorship, the rationale being that no one has a right to foul a public space established and maintained by others.  However, we are not permanently removing unsavory comments, we are simply relocating them here, where folks who don't want to waste time reading such childishness can avoid them but those who might be amused by them can more easily find them concentrated together.  Relocated comments will be identified on the basis of violations of our now slightly modified commentary guidelines, below.  However we also reserve the right to invoke additional criteria and will also delete any scatology and other naughty words, profanity, sacrilege, sexual innuendo, misogyny, homophobia, and gratuitous name-calling, etc.