MFGlobal and our vaporizing 1.2 billion dollars/Greece and Portugal/Gold and silver raid prior to first day notice

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen:

I guess our boys decided that a raid on silver and gold was necessary prior to first day notice.  The object of the exercise was to dampen the spirits of the long holders into taking cash and depositing it into the brokerage account in order to take delivery of gold and silver.  Gold closed down by 3.00 dollars to $1729.80 whereas silver fell by 25 cents to $33.50.  I would have to say that the raid was a total wipe out for our bankers.

Let us head over to the comex and assess trading.  First day notice is tomorrow.  However I still do not have delivery notices going into tomorrow.  This will be important so I will post it tonight in my comments sections.
The total comex gold OI today fell by 3551 contracts from 433,710 to 430,159.  On Friday we had a very good day for gold so again a few bankers bit the dust. The front options expiry month of January is now complete.  The big delivery month of February saw its OI rest tonight at a monstrously high 29,103 contracts.  I will still need tomorrow's OI data to see how many rolled into April.  The next front month of April saw its OI rise from 175,305 to 213,997 for a rollover of 38,692 contracts.  This snapshot would be as of Friday as all OI numbers are 24 hours back.  The estimated volume at the gold comex today was very very light at 184,065.  I would have thought that more rolled to the April month today.  The confirmed volume on the gold comex on Friday was very high at 343,879 but many were rollovers.

The total silver comex OI fell marginally by 121 contracts from 102,006 to 101,885.  Since silver had a great day on Friday we again lost some bankers who could not stand the heat.  The front options expiry month of January is now off the board.  The new front options expiry is now February and here the OI rose from 124 to 159 as these guys will be given a futures contract for February and thus automatically stand for metal.  The next big delivery month for silver is March and here the OI stayed quite constant rising by 500 contracts to 49,053.  The estimated volume at the silver comex today was anemic at 31,583 contracts.  The confirmed volume on Friday was also anemic at 34,752.