by Alasdair Macleod, GoldMoney:

Despite persistent premiums on Comex over London’s spot gold and silver, both metal contracts were marked down this week, with gold down $54 from last Friday to trade at $1673 in Europe this morning, and silver lost $0.34, trading at $14.86 on the same timescale.

Recent weeks have seen Comex swaps (bullion bank trading desks) struggle to close their short positions. In what appears to have been a coordinated takedown of open interest, the gold price rose. This is shown in our next chart.