If there is a bean counter out there, maybe you can help me understand the precious metal derivatives. Kirby provided a link to the source of his data:http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-ma...ives/dq111.pdf
His truncated table on gold and precious metal derivatives interested me. Looking at the data in Table 9 page 32, I came up with some interesting conjecture. As of March 31, JPMorgue has $112 billion of gold derivatives and $20 billion of precious metals derivatives. Exploring the site it appears that OCC classifies gold with silver and platinum as precious metals. My conjecture is for the total to drop from $112 to $20 billion, JPMorgue must have had a short derivative position in silver of $92 billion on March 31, 2011. The NYMEX close on 3/31 was $37.66 per ozt of silver. This must be 2.44 billion ozt of silver or more depending on their basis price when they cover their short position. If they were under water by $9 per ounce, they would have a short derivative position of 10 billion ounces. This compares to a registered CRIMEX inventory of 28 million ozt and a total worlk mine production of 736 million ozt in 2010. It would appear to me that JPMorge is short about 15 years silver production in their derivitives. At a market price of $50 they could be underwater by $250 billion or more. Maybe that is why they fought to bring the price down from the $48 high. JPMorgue is apparently long gold and short silver in their derivative positions and do not want silver outperforming gold.
