Registered Silver Ounces At the Comex

There are 49,436 contracts currently open for the next delivery month which is March 2012. Each contract represents 5,000 ounces. That is 247.18 million ounces of silver being traded for March delivery against a registered 36.56 million ounces. This is a subset of all the contracts going out over the year.

The is leverage of about 6.8 to 1. It 'works' because most contracts are