Just over one month ago, when looking at the latest changes in registered gold held at the Comex ,we were stunned not only by the collapse in this series to a record low of just over 350k ounces or barely over 10 tons, but also by the surge in “gold coverage”, or the amount of paper gold claims on physical gold, which exploded to a record high 124 per ounce.

This is what we said on over one month ago:

While on its own, gold open interest – which merely represents the total potential claims on gold if exercised – is hardly exciting, as we have shown previously it has to be observed in conjunction with the physical gold that “backs” such potential delivery requests, also known as the “coverage ratio” of deliverable gold.

It is here that things get a little out of hand, because as the chart below shows, all else equal, the 43.5 million ounces of gold open interest and the record low 351,519 ounces of registered gold imply that as of Friday’s close there was a whopping 123.8 ounces in potential paper claims to every ounces of physical gold.

This is an all time record high, and surpasses the previous period record seen in January 2014 following the JPM gold vault liquidation. 

Another way of stating this unprecedented ratio is that the dilution ratio between physical gold and paper gold has hit a record low 0.8%. Indicatively, the average paper-to-physical coverage ratio since January 1, 2000 is a “modest” 19.1x. As of Friday it had soared to more than 6 times greater.

One month ago we showed this record surge in gold claims as follows:

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But if last month was shocking, then what the COMEX revealed yesterday was absolutely jaw-dropping.

Here is the most recent update provided by the CME on eligible and registered gold.

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What it reveals is that while JPM saw another 90,000 ounces of gold once again withdrawn from its vault, this time in the eligible category, for some reason a whopping 121,124 ounces of registered gold were reclassified as eligible. In doing so, JPM’s registered gold (red line in chart below) tumbled to a record low of just 19,718 ounces – an 86% collapse in just one day –  and well under 1 ton of gold, some 600 kilos of physical gold available to meet delivery requests to be specific!