LONDON (Reuters) – The most active Comex futures for precious metals reduced their premium over the London spot prices on Thursday after Washington excluded the metals from broad U.S. import tariffs, easing stimulus to continue flying them to the United States.
President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday night that raise effective import taxes to the highest levels in a century, but there were exclusions from the tariffs – for gold, silver and platinum group metals among others.
The premium of Comex futures over London spot prices was last at around $20 per troy ounce compared with $43 on Wednesday. Usually, it is below $10.
The premium of silver and platinum futures over London spot also fell sharply.
“Few in the industry thought bullion would attract tariffs in the end. But the New York-London arbitrage still sucked a huge amount of metal across the Atlantic as speculators bet on dislocation,” said Adrian Ash, head of research at online marketplace BullionVault.
“Now that metal suddenly looks as unneeded.”
Gold as well as silver and platinum worth more than $80 billion at the current prices in total were delivered to the stocks in Comex warehouses with the risk of import tariffs hanging over them in December-March.
Latest data from Comex, part of CME Group, shows gold stored in its warehouses in the U.S. at an all-time high of 44.5 million troy ounces worth $138 billion compared with 17.1 million in November when Donald Trump was elected U.S. President.
Comex stocks are currently equal to five years of the U.S. gold consumption and four years of the U.S. silver demand.
However, major outflows from them back to where they came from – London and other major trade hubs – is unlikely until the price spread, which the market tracks through the exchange of futures for physical (EFPs), further reduces the premium.
For the shipments to reverse, EFPs would have to go negative, where one could sell London and buy the futures at a lower price, said Robert Gottlieb, an industry expert and former head of precious metals at Koch Supply and Trading.
(Reporting by Polina Devitt; Editing by David Evans)
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