Chart Chat

Have a question about what one of our data series means? Want to discuss unusual chart activity that wasn’t covered in our weekly Supply and Demand Report? Leave a comment below and we, or our passionate subscribers, will endavour to answer it.

We also welcome error spotting. While we have applied unconventional proprietary techniques to clean up over a terabyte of data, we aren’t infallible so we may miss errors in the source data or our algorithms may not have considered new corner cases. We are constantly refining our data processing systems and welcome your input.

Notes about our charts

Our charts are based on a licensed database from Thomson Reuters of time-stamped bid and offer tick data for both spot and futures markets, for the entire trading day. To that we have applied unconventional proprietary techniques to filter the raw data, which can contain glitches, reflect temporary or even ephemeral conditions in the real world and spurious noise, to reveal the full information content of the underlying signals. You can read more about our methodology here.

Note that the Monetary Metals® GOFO and SIFO rates, and lease rates derived from them, are indicative only. The high correlation of Monetary Metals’ rates to the LBMA’s means that they are useful as a reference point for the direction of forward and lease rates, rather than as absolute executable rates.

Our three month time period charts show our actual underlying data but we have applied a 5 day moving average to our data in the three year and max time period charts to make it visually easier to read.

21 replies
  1. Pontus says:

    Thanks for interesting charts. My suggestions:

    1. Elaborate somewhere on when and how frequently you update the charts. Now it’s Tuesday but Mondays charts are still missing.

    2. The resuloution is way too low. Reading axix text is sometimes difficult.

    • Keith Weiner says:

      Thanks for your feedback.

      The charts update on or before 6am AZ time. They are one day behind. The chart contains a legend indicating the date of the most recent data it contains.

      • Pontus says:

        For the last two weeks the charts update with a lag of two to five days. I have never seen the lag you claim. As I write Wednesdays charts are showing in my browser. It shouldn’t be too difficult to add a Cron job on the server so you achieve timely updates.

  2. Pizza Genie says:

    There seems to be some techinal display or update errors with the various types of charts the last few days. Everything was working normally over the past 2 weeks whenever I would check. Now I’m getting different dates for each chart, attempting to look early 6:40am Thursday July 13 and I see:

    Gold/Silver basis shows Thursday July 6
    Gold/Silver ration shows Monday July 10 and logs my username out when attempting to view
    Gold/Silver fundamentals appears the normal 1 day behind, showing Tuesday July 11
    Forward/Lease rates show 2 days behind Monday July 10

    Must be a recent website glitch. I remember seeing the Friday July 7 gold/silver basis numbers in the chart when I checked on Monday. Maybe the data is being corrected manually and a re-updated chart is coming?

  3. Pontus says:

    The fundamental price increased by some 90 USD over the last two days. That is an enormous increase, bigger than anything I have seen before. Could you explain what factors are behind the move as I cannot see any obvious major changes to the market over the last few days that motivate such a major move.

  4. Minos says:

    I am missing the decisive chart:

    The pattern of GOFO and gold basis are very similiar to LIBOR, in fact only the deviation(!) from LIBOR ist of interest, but is not visualized by these charts.

    Lease Rate of gold is more interesting, but also only of real interest in comparison to LIBOR. For example, if Lease Rate > LIBOR, then Gold ist in backwardation.

    So which decisive, meaningful chart is missing? It´s the index RTI, a measure of the extend of contango om relation to US-Dollar (i.e. LIBOR) RTI is defined by RTI=1-Lease Rate/LIBOR=GOFO/LIBOR
    Please refer to http://www.realterm.de, for a chart, look here: http://www.realterm.de/images/RTI_max.png

    RTI=1 means gold is 100% in contango
    RTI=0 means gold is 0% contango or exactly in between contango and backwardation
    RTI1 should theoretically be impossible, but ist isn´t, so it´s an artefact.

    • Minos says:

      correction:

      RTI=1 means gold is 100% in contango
      RTI=0 means gold is 0% contango or exactly in between contango and backwardation
      RTI1 should theoretically be impossible, but ist isn´t, so it´s an artefact.

      • Minos says:

        Third try:

        RTI=1 means:
        gold is 100% in contango

        RTI=0 means:
        gold is 0% contango or exactly in between contango and backwardation

        RTI smaller than 0 means:
        gold is in backwardation, i.e. apocalypse now

        RTI bigger than 1:
        should theoretically be impossible, but ist isn´t, so it´s an artefact.

  5. Minos says:

    In addition I´m very, very interested in the data of GOFO and Lease Rate calculated by MonetaryMetals in order to update the chart here:

    http://www.realterm.de/images/RTI_max.png

    As you can see in this graph, the calculated RTI-Index=GOFO/LIBOR indicates future price moves of gold and it would be veryinteresting, if it also worked the last 4 years in an (almost) zero-interest environment.

    Minos

  6. fightstyle says:

    Hello all,

    “Gold Basis Continuous
    This chart shows a continuous (splicing together of individual) basis and cobasis against the US dollar’s price in milligrams of gold.”

    How do you splice together all individual futures contracts? Do you somehow weight Open Interest or you use another method?

    Best,
    Dimo

  7. CB01 says:

    I’ve been looking for current/historical data on LBMA lease rates on palladium/platinum/gold/silver, but it’s come to my attention that LBMA no longer reports them.

    Do you offer any ‘proxy’ rates for PA & PL like done for gold (MM GOFO) & silver (MM SIFO)?

    • Dickson Buchanan says:

      Hello Pizza Genie, our data provider changed the way they provide some of the data inputs to us. We’re actively working on a resolution with them. I apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve.

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