Ted Butler: JP Morgue is Cornering the Gold Market!

• Ted Butler: JPM is Cornering the Gold Market! 
  by Ted Butler, via http://www.silverdoctors.com/ 
  Summary
  For the past few weeks I have been harping on JPMorgan’s massive long position in COMEX gold futures, stating that nothing comes closer in importance for the price. There has never been a case where a market corner wasn’t the prime price determinant. Preventing or eliminating market corners is the number one priority under commodity law. A market corner is the antitheses of how a free market is supposed to operate.
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  A series of market corners and manipulation in the early part of the last century (the Jesse Livermore era) was what led to the formation of commodity regulation in the US in the 1930’s.  It’s bad enough when entities such as the Hunt Brothers or the rogue copper trader from Sumitomo cornered markets; but it’s a whole different level of badness when the most important US bank corners a market, as JPMorgan has done in COMEX gold futures.
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  By Ted Butler:
  Today I would like to step back a bit and highlight how we got to the outrageous position of JPMorgan cornering the gold market. Regular readers know that I have pinpointed JPMorgan as being the prime manipulator in gold and silver for going on five years, following the revelation from the federal commodities regulator, the CFTC, that JPMorgan inherited the massive concentrated gold and silver short positions of Bear Stearns in March 2008. That, plus verifiable data from the CFTC, in its published Commitments of Traders (COT) and Bank Participation Reports, clearly confirm my allegations of a market corner by JPMorgan in COMEX gold futures.
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  This may seem hard to believe, but JPMorgan’s current corner on the COMEX gold market is the second market corner in the gold market by this bank in the last nine months and among many prior corners over the past five years in gold and silver. JPMorgan is a serial market manipulator and now swings both ways in cornering markets; usually on the short side of markets until the current long corner in gold.
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  Based upon COT and Bank Participation Reports data, last December 4, JPMorgan had a net short position in COMEX gold futures of approximately 75,000 contracts. This position represented 20.5% of the true net open interest on that date (once 68,648 spread contracts were removed from total open interest of 434,416 contracts). On that date, the price of gold was $1700. While it is difficult for many (including the CFTC) to grasp the concept that a corner could exist on the short side of the market, surely no one would argue against a 20.5% concentrated share of a major regulated futures market by a single entity would constitute manipulation and a corner.
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  It was this corner on the short side of COMEX gold futures by JPMorgan that provided the incentive and led to the subsequent $500 decline in the price of gold into the end of June. On the historic price decline in gold over the first half of 2013, JPMorgan booked profits on their short side gold market corner (of over $2 billion in my estimate) and continued to rig prices lower in order to establish their current long side corner of 85,000 contracts, or 25% of the true net open interest in COMEX gold futures (minus spreads).
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  You can’t go from being 75,000 contracts (7.5 million oz) net short to 85,000 contracts (8.5 million oz) net long in an instant or in a week or a month. You can’t snap your fingers and buy the equivalent of 16 million oz of gold, regardless of whether you have the money to leverage derivatives with a notional value of $25 billion. It took JPMorgan nine months to buy 160,000 net COMEX gold futures contracts (16 million oz), at an average monthly rate of around 18,000 contracts (1.8 million oz) from Dec 4 thru today.
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