COMEX Feb-2014 Gold Contract Delivery: 341 contracts to go - Weekly Update

5,920 Feb-2014 contracts filed for delivery on first notice day January 31st.  As of last Friday, 3,639 have been settled and 1,940 have been 'lost' to delivery.  The trend looks very similar to the last major delivery contract month of Dec-13.  

Refer to my post from last week for more commentary and definitions.

Thus far in February, JPM, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of Nova Scotia have issued 45%, 12%, and 38% of all settlements.  HSBC and Barclays have stopped or taken ownership of 62% and 27% of all settlements.  

Month to date those who were short Feb gold futures contracts have been able to settle almost all open interest.  In order to cover, 208,686 ounces of gold were addded to registered COMEX inventory month to date, which increased registered inventory to 648,586 ounces.   About 75% of the increase or 151,019 ounces of gold was added to eligible inventory and is new to the COMEX system  http://harveyorgan.blogspot.com/2014/02/feb-21gold-rises-by-680silver-by-10.html   The rest of the increase came out of eligible inventory.  In summary, 648,586 ounces was needed to cover 592,000 ounces of open interest on first notice day.  Gold prices are up 7% month to date, which helped acquire the additional gold for COMEX inventory and settlement.

COMEX eligible inventory is about 6.5 million ounces.  COMEX will not experience a delivery default with this much available gold.  Of course higher prices may be necessary to entice the owners to sell it.  

Here is an excellent post regarding the relevance of registered and eligible gold inventory at the COMEX by Bron Suchecki.  Thanks to Kid Dynamite for referring it.
http://www.perthmintbullion.com/us/blog/blog/14-01-08/Comex_Stocks_Claims_On_Bullion_Well_Below_Historical_Highs_At_5_1.aspx