Gold and Silver advance/Euro breaks to the upside/No Greek deal

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen:

Today's commentary is will short as I have arrived home late today.

The price of gold rose by $14.30 to $1678. Silver also rose by 59 cents to $32.24.
I would like to caution you that we have the FOMC meeting results on Wednesday and Thursday is the dreaded options expiry. So be careful as our bankers surely raid around these events.

Let us head over to the comex and assess trading, inventory movements and of course amounts of gold and silver standing.

The total gold comex OI fell by 2833 contracts from 441,320 to 438,487. Because gold had a good day on Friday we must have seen some liquidations probably by our banker friends. The front options expiry month of January saw its OI fall from 53 to 42 for a loss of 11 contracts. We had 11 delivery notices on Friday so we neither gained nor lost any gold and thus no cash settlements. The next big delivery month for gold is next week as first day notice is next Tuesday the 31st of January. Here the OI fell from 156,621 to 148,308 and this movement to a futures month is on schedule. Nothing earth shattering here. The estimated volume at the gold comex came in at 147,018 which is very mild. The confirmed volume on Friday with a big rise in gold came in at 153,683 which is also tame. Due to the confiscation with respect to the MF GLobal fiasco fewer players are playing the comex casino.

The total silver comex OI rose in contrast to gold. The new Oi rests tonight at 104,406. In gold we had liquidation but in silver we had accumulation of the metal by stronger hands. The front options expiry month of January saw its OI fall from 152 to 108 for a loss of only 44 contracts despite 114 delivery notices on Friday. We thus gained 70 contracts of additional silver standing (350,000 oz) and lost nothing to cash settlements. The next big delivery month is March and here the OI rose from 51,351 to 53,024. We are still quite away from first day notice which is Feb 28.2012 for March delivery. The estimated volume at the silver comex was very light at 42,910. The confirmed volume on Friday was also light at 46,146.