The
March silver futures contract first entered backwardation on Mar 9 and with a
few zigs and zags has not only remained there but has gone deeper and deeper
in. The April gold future just entered backwardation today. See
the graph (backwardation is when (Spot(bid) - Future(offer) > 0).
We
shall see what the coming days bring for the April gold future, but the fact
that backwardation has occurred at all is significant. The fact
that it is now a “normal” occurrence since fall 2008 indicates a
deep pathology.
I
have written in the past about gold and silver backwardation (http://keithweiner.posterous.com/debunking-gold-manipulation and http://keithweiner.posterous.com/the-decline-and-fall-of-silver-backwardation and http://keithweiner.posterous.com/when-gold-backwardation-becomes-permanent). The gist is that
one can look at the spread between the price of a future vs. the price in the
spot market of the same commodity.
We
define the basis as the Future(bid) – Spot(ask) and the cobasis is, as
mentioned above, Spot(bid) – Future(offer). In a normal world,
the basis is positive and it is basically given by the rate of
interest. The cobasis should be negative unless there is a shortage.
A shortage of gold or silver is meaningless as people have accumulated
enormous inventories of the stuff over thousands of years.
But
in the “new normal”, post 2008, the expiring gold or silver
future often flirts with or even slips into backwardation for a period before
expiry. This is anything but normal. It’s not a sign of
imminent financial Armageddon, but it is a sign that beneath the surface
there is a growing rot in the core of the system. Why?
The
short answer is that no actionable opportunity to make free money should last
more than a millisecond (or less, due to High Frequency Trading). If
one can see a “risk free profit” sitting on the screen day after
day, let alone if this profit is growing, this is a sign that All Is Not Well
even if one doesn’t know why or what specifically is happening.
Backwardation means that anyone who has gold or silver could simultaneously
sell the metal and buy futures contracts to recover their position, and make
a profit. And, given the enormous stocks of gold and silver, many people
have lots of gold and silver.
The
backwardations that are “normal” today are too small for the
retail trader to profit from, given that he must pay commissions. But
they are easily large enough for many institutions that make a market in gold
(especially compared to their alternatives for short-term capital). The
following question remains unanswered:
Why
do institutions not take the risk-free profit offered to them in gold and
silver?
I
don’t believe it’s because they are afraid of the risk. I
make this statement in light of two facts: (1) the near-month future expires
very soon (about 5 weeks for April gold or a week for March silver) and (2)
the farther-out futures are not in backwardation. The financial system
is not going to collapse in 5 weeks, and if it were then the farther futures
would fall further into backwardation. Trust in delivery 5 months from
now would be less than trust in delivery 5 weeks or 5 days from now.
As
a reminder, to profit from contango, one must buy physical and sell a future
against it to end with the same net position plus a small profit. To
profit from contango, one carries the metal. Think of carrying
as like warehousing it for a small fee. The only prerequisite is that
one needs cash (or more typically credit). Carrying will push up the
ask in physical and push down the bid in the future, thus reducing the basis.
In
contrast, to profit from backwardation, one decarries by selling
physical and buying a future. The prerequisite is that one needs the
metal. One could either sell one’s own metal, or if one had
previously carried metal one could unwind the carry. Either way, this
would push down on the spot bid and up on the future ask until the cobasis
was zero or negative.
For
whatever reason(s), this is either not occurring or despite it, the ask on
the future is falling relative to the bid on spot.
For
now, let’s just say that the market is tight. The metal is out
there, but obviously those who have it in an unencumbered form are not able
(retail) or willing (others?) to take this backwardation bait.
I
will drill deeper into this in another article soon.
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