COMEX Owners Per Ounce

The COMEX, part of the CME Group Inc. (Chicago Mercantile Exchange), is an American global markets company, and the world's largest financial derivatives exchange (futures and options). They trade in many asset classes, including gold and silver. Note that gold and silver futures are mostly used for hedging and are not typically delivered.

We can use the open interest, registered, and eligible oz numbers to get "owners per ounce", to obtain valuations for gold and silver.

For gold, we can get the open interest here. At the time of writing, this is 534,574, and because a contract for gold is 100 troy oz, this becomes 53,457,400 troy oz. We can get the registered and eligible numbers from this Excel file, and as of the time of writing they are registered = 19,358,624.31, and eligible = 19,767,473.68.

Therefore the open interest/registered = 53,457,400/19,358,624.31 = 2.76 owners per ounce of gold. Incorporating the eligible number, open interest/(registered+eligible) = 53,457,400/(19,358,624.31+19,767,473.68) = 1.37 owners per ounce of gold.

The current spot price of gold at time of writing is $1,815.8 / troy oz. Multipling this by 2.76 and separately by 1.37 give valuations for gold of $5,014.20 and $2,480.90 respectively.

For silver, we can get the open interest here. At the time of writing, this is 167,880, and because a contract for silver is 5,000 troy oz, this becomes 839,400,000 troy oz. We can get the registered and eligible numbers from this Excel file, and as of the time of writing they are registered = 152,049,699.37, and eligible = 246,790,840.51.

Therefore the open interest/registered = 839,400,000/152,049,699.37 = 5.52 owners per ounce of silver. Incorporating the eligible number, open interest/(registered+eligible) = 839,400,000/(152,049,699.37+246,790,840.51) = 2.10 owners per ounce of silver.

The current spot price of silver at time of writing is $26.95 / troy oz. Multipling this by 5.52 and separately by 2.10 give valuations for silver of $148.78 and $56.72 respectively.

Note that the second ratio, open interest/(registered+eligible), is just showing that one can just borrow from the eligible metal. Although, cash settlement is probably the norm.

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