Strange Comex Silver movements

Jon Blogosphere, Market Commentary, Precious Metals, Silver

In a stunning development, the Comex Registered Silver inventories experienced a large one day decline yesterday. Nearly 10% of total Comex Registered Silver inventories were removed from the exchange on the last day of the year and reported on Jan 4th.
According to the CME Group’s Metal Depository Statistics, 3.5 million ounces (Moz) of Registered Silver Inventories were withdrawn and transferred to the Eligible category:

As we can see, there was 1.5 Moz transferred out of Brinks, 1.6 Moz from the CNT Depository and nearly 300,000 oz removed from JP Morgan for a total of 3,517,348 oz. At the end of 2015 (Dec 31st), there were 40.3 Moz held in Registered Silver inventories at the Comex. After this large one day transfer, only 36.7 Moz remains.
This is an interesting development for two reasons:
This is the lowest level the Comex Registered Silver inventories have been for the past three years and,
The motivation for depositories to transfer that much silver out of its deliverable category.

This post was published at TruthinGold on January 7, 2016.