wisdom is repeatable

market vibes

April 1… )

“Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry…” Don McLean

In the news this morning

More specious tariff nonsense and related inflation. A tariff is simply a tax that someone else pays.

Blackrock is launching a new S&P 500 ETF that weights biggest 10 issues (the Mags) for a combined 22%, in line with the benchmark’s average concentration level over the past 35 years vs 34% now. If anyone is stupid enough to pay fees for something tha market will do anyway, that’s Wall Street. There’s an arb for sure, just like GLD…and that’s the game.

There are a few upbeat items about the US auto business: “The prospect of tariffs is already beginning to affect the industry,” Thomas King, president of data and analytics at JD Power, said in a statement. March results were “particularly strong, enabled by consumers accelerating purchases to avoid potential tariff-related price increases.” MAGA should favor Ford and Chevy. They can’t get worse!

Liberation day tomorrow. More EOs last night. The Wisconsin vote today. The Dodgers won again extending their streak to six games; best start since they moved to LA in 1958.

In the markets

In gold this morning, a little housekeeping: Last night in the wrap I wrote, “Apart from subdued quarter-end volume, prices are accelerating up. A surge of 35k OI cob Friday is already circa $50 in credit.” Actually the surge was 62,000 lots. Either I miss-counted (likely) or the data was revised overnight. No matter. It was a very large increase. What does matter is open interest fell 68,000 as of preliminary data for March 31 at 6 AM EDT.

What does it mean? The most probable answer is gold is being withdrawn and being sent back to London or another destination where a loan is coming due with hard terms. Or the CME will revise OI again because the net change is 600k toz., not 6 million.

At any rate gold made another new ATH this morning and prices are orderly which if… 6 million ounces were being competitively priced yesterday, the chart would not look orderly.

And if there were a large withdrawl of gold from the Comex yesterday, it will show up here. So far Comex stocks are still rising. Maybe a revision later today.

Whether random or related, platinum open interest did the same up/down thing, albeit much smaller numbers. Maybe take a shaker of salt with these numbers… maybe not.

China’s Caixin manufacturing PMI grew at its fastest pace in four months in March lending color to copper’s recent leap…. Oil prices are lower quiet trading. Stocks are where we left them. Bonds and the Yen are bid. Crypto is still stuck in nowhere land. Day 1, Q2 here we go…