Keith Weiner | On August 12, 2015

Last week, we left off with this.

“Something is happening with gold…”

It began in Dec 2008. To understand it, it is necessary to understand two principles. The first is that gold is money and the dollar is credit, which currently has nontrivial value. A dollar is worth 28.4mg gold. To understand the second, let’s look at how markets work at the mechanical level.

Regular readers of this Report know that we emphasize the bid and ask prices as separate values. The people and forces involved in the bid price are different from those involved in the ask price. This is critical in our definition and calculation of the basis and cobasis. You cannot just assume that there is a real price, somewhere between the bid and ask. That may be a working approximation during normal market conditions. But it could be badly misleading.

Suppose there is stress in the market, a crisis impending or active. The bid recedes, and can even withdraw entirely. For example, what if the US Geological Survey were to say that there will be an earthquake in Los Angeles, 15 on the Richter scale, and nothing taller than a dollhouse will be left standing? You would not find any lack of offers to sell real estate. But what is the price of a house in LA? There wouldn’t be a bid in LA, and maybe not as far south as Chile, as far north as British Columba, and as far east as the Mississippi River. The bid would come back into the market when the threat was over (perhaps at a much lower level).

The second principle is that gold is not offered for dollars, despite what you see on any quote board. Gold is bidding on the dollar. It is comforting to assume it will always be so, that the only question is price. This is an illusion, based on unwarranted faith and the assumption—or hope—that things will continue as they currently are.

Even gold bugs accept this. They ask when gold will hit $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever price level. It may not. It may go off the board first. We don’t know what the final quote will be, but we do know that there will be one.

What’s been happening since 2008? The process of withdrawing the gold bid on the dollar has begun. There are intermittent episodes where we can see it in miniature. Of course, we’re referring to backwardation in gold and silver futures. Gold backwardation should not be possible, and yet it is occurring. So far, it’s only in small amounts and only for near contracts (not counting the episode in silver which extended out years)—what we call temporary backwardation.

Right now, the October and December gold contracts are backwardated. These backwardations, like all of them in the past 7 years, are small. At the moment, they’re less than a dollar an ounce. This is not something you can see by using typical end-of-day quotes. You need a sensitive and precise instrument, which is what Monetary metals has built.

It’s part of why we have continued to say that the market price of gold is far below the fundamental price.

Speaking of price, not much happened with the gold price last week, though there were a few $14 round trips. The price of gold ended a buck lower than the previous week. The price of silver did drop to $14.37 after hours on Monday. It ended the week up four cents. The true action was not seen in the price, but in the basis.

Read on for the only accurate picture of the supply and demand conditions in the gold and silver markets, based on the basis and cobasis.

First, here is the graph of the metals’ prices.

The Prices of Gold and Silver

We are interested in the changing equilibrium created when some market participants are accumulating hoards and others are dishoarding. Of course, what makes it exciting is that speculators can (temporarily) exaggerate or fight against the trend. The speculators are often acting on rumors, technical analysis, or partial data about flows into or out of one corner of the market. That kind of information can’t tell them whether the globe, on net, is hoarding or dishoarding.

One could point out that gold does not, on net, go into or out of anything. Yes, that is true. But it can come out of hoards and into carry trades. That is what we study. The gold basis tells us about this dynamic.

Conventional techniques for analyzing supply and demand are inapplicable to gold and silver, because the monetary metals have such high inventories. In normal commodities, inventories divided by annual production (stocks to flows) can be measured in months. The world just does not keep much inventory in wheat or oil.

With gold and silver, stocks to flows is measured in decades. Every ounce of those massive stockpiles is potential supply. Everyone on the planet is potential demand. At the right price, and under the right conditions. Looking at incremental changes in mine output or electronic manufacturing is not helpful to predict the future prices of the metals. For an introduction and guide to our concepts and theory, click here.

Next, this is a graph of the gold price measured in silver, otherwise known as the gold to silver ratio. The ratio moved down this week.

The Ratio of the Gold Price to the Silver Price

For each metal, we will look at a graph of the basis and cobasis overlaid with the price of the dollar in terms of the respective metal. It will make it easier to provide brief commentary. The dollar will be represented in green, the basis in blue and cobasis in red.

Here is the gold graph.

The Gold Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price

The price of the dollar rose a bit more (i.e. the price of gold fell). Again, along with this price move, the scarcity of gold rose a bit.

Let’s zoom into the past month, and look at not just the October cobasis, but also the December and February. You can see how the dollar correlates with these three cobases. Notice that February is close to the zero line (i.e. backwardation) but no cigar yet.

Closeup of Gold

Now let’s look at silver.

The Silver Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price

The silver price is up a bit (i.e. the price of the dollar, as measured in silver, is down). There was a sharp drop in scarcity on Friday. And a dramatic drop in the December cobasis as well, it is lower this week than last.

The fundamental price of gold is still about a hundred bucks over the market. And in silver, it’s about 20 cents under. The price spike at 6 A.M. (Arizona time) on Friday was justified in gold, but not in silver.

Keith Weiner

Keith Weiner is CEO of Monetary Metals, a precious metals fund company in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is a leading authority in the areas of gold, money, and credit and has made important contributions to the development of trading techniques founded upon the analysis of bid-ask spreads. He is founder of DiamondWare, a software company sold to Nortel in 2008, and founder of the Gold Standard Institute USA. Weiner attended university at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and earned his PhD at the (non-accredited) New Austrian School of Economics.