Comex silver vaults publish daily inventory data that almost no one reads correctly. Here's how to separate signal from noise and what the registered category actually means.
Contents3 sections
Every trading day, the CME publishes a silver inventory report. Most analysts cite the headline number. Most analysts are reading it wrong.
The structure of those vaults matters more than the totals.
Registered vs eligible
Comex silver is split into two categories. Eligible silver meets exchange specifications but isn't currently available for delivery. Registered silver sits behind a warrant and can be delivered against an expiring futures contract. The split tells you something the headline doesn't.
What dropping registered actually signals
When registered inventory falls sharply while eligible holds steady, owners are pulling silver off the delivery shelf. They might be moving it overseas, allocating it for industrial use, or simply taking it private. None of those are bullish for paper sellers.
- Mid-2020: registered fell from 165M oz to under 90M oz as ETFs absorbed metal
- Early 2021: brief spike then steady drain through 2022
- 2023: registered hovered between 30M and 45M oz, historically thin
- 2024: episodes of single-day drawdowns above 5M oz, unusual by historical standards
'Eligible silver is a phone book. Registered silver is what you can actually move tonight.' — vault desk operator, anonymous
The delivery month signal
March, May, July, September, and December are major silver delivery months. Watching how registered inventory behaves in the days before first notice tells you whether shorts are scrambling or comfortable. Sharp drops into delivery with rising open interest usually precede physical premium spikes within 30-60 days.
Conversely, calm delivery months with stable registered counts and orderly contract rolls suggest paper market liquidity is healthy. Most months look like this. The interesting ones don't.
The 2021 squeeze attempt was visible in inventory data days before spot moved. Registered holdings dropped 8% in a single week as delivery requests spiked. Anyone watching the daily report had advance warning.
The data is free. The CME publishes it every afternoon. The fact that almost no one tracks it consistently is itself a market inefficiency, especially for traders willing to combine inventory data with COT positioning and ETF flows.
Bottom line: Comex inventory isn't predictive on its own, but persistent registered drawdowns combined with rising open interest are one of the few real leading indicators silver offers.
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