banksters seem short-silver hesitant; vaccine is the mechanism

Five economic reports this week:

• Industrial Production: -0.02% m/m [prior +0.4% m/m]; topping out, recessionary
• Personal Income: +0.32% m/m [prior +0.55% m/m]; steady uptrend, increasingly inflationary
• Auto/Light Truck Sales: -6.57% m/m [prior +18.7% m/m]; medium-term expansionary
• GDP: +1.61% q/q [prior +1.88% q/q]; adjusted for (CPI) inflation: slowing-to-recessionary.
• Fed Balance Sheet: -0.32% m/m (-87 billion) [prior +1% m/m]; tightening following the bank-default money printing spree.

It’s a mixed bag once again, but the general sense is – inflation continues, while the economy is slowly starting to contract.  I’m also guessing that the steadily rising Personal Income numbers are at least partially driven by that services worker shortage first reported by Ed Dowd and his team.

Since Friday marked the end of March – I’ll show monthly charts, which will enable us to see the longer-term trend.

First – a monthly rates chart.  Even though the Fed raised rates 25 bp (which caused Fed Funds Rate to increase), most of the rest of the bond rates fell.  This I believe was a result of money fleeing the banking system as well as the sharper people realizing that banks pay nothing, and short-term bonds pay 4-5%.  A million in principal here, a million in principal there, pretty soon you’re talking about real interest income.

This week gold fell 15.40 [-0.77%], but in March gold jumped 140.30 [+7.64%] to 1977.  You can see that this week marks the highest monthly close for gold since 2020.   In the longer term timeframe, gold remains in a strong uptrend.  One other detail: more than 20,000 contracts stood for delivery in March.  That sounds like a lot, except when we look back in time, we see the deliveries number was around 50k during gold’s 2020 spike through $2000/oz.   The more deliveries, the higher the chance for the long-awaited COMEX default.  Not sure we’re there just yet.  That said – a monthly close above 2000 would definitely send a signal.

For the week, silver rose 0.82 [+3.50%] to 24.16, while for March, silver jumped 3.08 [+14.64%].  This month is a demonstration of why I like to look at the OI (Open Interest).  This month, after a $3 jump in silver, OI actually fell to a low not seen since (checks notes) 2013.