Arbitrage between paper and physical price of silver

For years I have monitored the spot price of silver with the physical price of silver and this is the first time that I have seen that the spot price of silver falls, while the physical price of silver is rising. 

Have they finally hit the wall? Is lowering the paper price actually going to increase the physical price?

Arbitrage opportunity in agriculture

At this moment there is an interesting arbitrage opportunity for investors in the agricultural space.

When we look at the potash price we see the following trend downwards. Ever since the break-up of the potash cartel between Uralkali and Belarusian Potash Company in July 2013, we have seen a drop in potash price from 400 USD/t to 300 USD/t (see chart below from InfoMine.com).

Normally, the potash price follows the food price, because the food price is a leading indicator for the potash price. I have noted this correlation here. So you would expect that the potash price would get some momentum upwards since food prices have soared almost 20% since the start of 2014 (see chart of RJA below from Google Finance, which represents agricultural prices).

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The Declining Trade Deficit: Not As Rosy As You Would Think

The trade deficit numbers are out for June 2013 and have been very positive. Due to an oil boom, the trade deficit shrank 22% from around $44 billion in January 2013 to $34 billion in June 2013.

As you can see on Chart 1, the decrease in deficit was due to an increase in exports (red chart) and a decrease in imports (blue chart). This looks very promising, but I want to show that not all is well if you look into the details.

Chart 1: Import Vs. Export

Let’s look deeper into these import and export numbers. Chart 2 gives the breakdown of the export numbers. The largest segments are “machinery and transport equipment”, “chemicals and related products” “mineral fuels and lubricants” and “re-exports”.

Chart 2: Exports January 2013

Chart 3 gives the breakdown of the import numbers. The largest segments are ‘machinery and transport equipment”, “mineral fuels and lubricants”, “miscellaneous manufactured articles”.

Chart 3: Imports January 2013

From these numbers we can deduct that the oil industry is indeed a very important segment that will influence the import and export numbers.

If we then further look at how these numbers evolve in time from January 2013 till June 2013 we have charts 4 and 5.

Chart 4: Exports (billion USD)

Chart 5: Imports (billion USD)

When analyzing the trends on charts 4 and 5, there is one segment that is worth noting. We see that exports of petroleum products (which are incorporated in the segment “mineral fuels and lubricants”) have been going up, while imports of the same have been going down. The reason for this can be found in the divergence of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil and Brent crude oil.

To continue reading this analysis: go here.

Follow Up on Eric Sprott’s Bullish Call on Gold

As a follow up on Eric Sprott’s bullish call on gold here, let’s see what has happened ever since.

His premise was that hedge funds take possession of their physical gold of the GLD trust, because there isn’t any other gold available. As they take possession of this physical gold, they are going to sell it to China who give huge premiums on this physical gold (around 3%).

Following chart indeed says to us that hedge funds are still taking possession of their GLD trust units. The GLD now only has 969 tonnes of physical gold left. The question is now, how much physical gold does GLD really have? If someone knows, please tell me. But we have another way we can look at it, by just looking at how much registered gold there is on the COMEX.

Chart 1: GLD

If we look at the COMEX warehouses, registered gold (which represents 40 tonnes physical gold) is declining (blue chart on Chart 2). Total stock is declining too (around 200 tonnes). When these charts hit zero, there is no gold anymore at the COMEX and we will see defaults. The gold exchange will become a cash exchange.

Once the blue line intersects with zero, bad things will happen because no physical gold is available at the COMEX. I guess that when the blue line intersects, there is a chance GLD could blow up as people scramble to get physical gold at the GLD trust.

Chart 2: COMEX

Jim Sinclair confirms:

As long as physical gold remains at a premium above future that is above the cost of insurance and transportation, the lower the inventory of gold at the COMEX goes. A futures exchange without a warehouse inventory becomes a cash exchange. This is the emancipation of physical gold from the manipulative capacity of No-Gold, Paper – Gold

Now let’s see how this translates into the premiums on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

Chart 3: Shanghai Gold Premium

As you can see on Chart 3, the premium has never been as high since I monitored it. We are at 2.8% now.

So investors are taking the opportunity to make arbitrage profits by buying gold from GLD and selling it to China at a premium.

Let’s see how long this can go on.

On the silver front, premiums have almost skyrocketed to 40% for some miners.

Chart 4: First Majestic Silver premium