CME Warehouse Stocks

Bob Gottlieb Explains: What Are COMEX & NYMEX Warehouse Stocks?

One of the most misunderstood indicators in the precious metals market is CME warehouse stocks.

CME Group operates two futures exchanges for precious metals: COMEX, where gold and silver futures trade, and NYMEX, where platinum and palladium futures trade. Because these futures contracts can result in physical delivery, CME licenses a network of approved commercial vaults (called depositories) that store metal meeting strict standards for purity, bar size, weight, and approved refiners.

At the end of every business day, CME publishes the amount of metal held in each depository. These reports—known as warehouse stocks—provide one of the clearest windows into the physical side of the futures market.

Why does this matter?

While futures open interest can expand almost without limit as buyers and sellers enter new contracts, metal delivered against a futures contract must actually exist in an approved vault and satisfy CME delivery specifications. Warehouse stocks therefore represent one of the few places where the paper futures market intersects with the physical bullion market.

Eligible vs. Registered

Warehouse stocks are divided into two categories:

Eligible

Eligible metal meets all CME delivery specifications but has not been designated for delivery. It is typically owned by investors, bullion banks, ETFs, refiners, or other market participants who are storing metal in CME-approved vaults. In many cases, owners keep metal in the eligible category because it is not intended for immediate delivery and may incur lower storage or administrative costs.

Registered

Registered metal is eligible metal that has been designated and warranted for delivery against a futures contract. It is immediately available to satisfy delivery obligations.

An important point that is often misunderstood is that eligible metal is not "unavailable." Much of it can be converted to registered status quickly, often on the same business day if the owner chooses to make it available for delivery. As a result, movements between eligible and registered inventories frequently reflect changes in owners' intentions rather than physical metal entering or leaving the vault.

By monitoring warehouse stocks, along with deposits, withdrawals, deliveries, and transfers between eligible and registered categories, investors can gain valuable insight into physical market conditions, liquidity, and the evolving relationship between the futures and OTC bullion markets.

Why warehouse stocks matter

• Delivery capacity. Comparing registered stocks against the open interest still outstanding in the front delivery month shows how much committed metal stands behind contracts that must settle. Read that ratio carefully, though: historically 97–99% of contracts are closed out before delivery, so open interest was never a claim on inventory, and part of the registered pile is pledged to the clearing house as performance bond and cannot satisfy a delivery at all. A tight reading is a price signal — longs bidding for metal whose owners have not yet chosen to offer it — rather than evidence the vaults are empty.
• Physical stress signals. Sustained inflows mean metal is being pulled toward the exchange, usually because futures are pricing above other venues and it pays to ship metal in. Sustained outflows mean the opposite. Either way, the direction is a read on where physical demand is strongest.
• Warrant shifts as intent. Because an eligible-to-registered conversion is a decision rather than a shipment, a jump in registered ounces tells you holders have chosen to make metal available — often the earliest visible sign that a tight delivery month will resolve smoothly.
• Context for the rest of the market. Warehouse stocks are most informative read alongside the futures curve and COT positioning: a market in backwardation with falling registered stocks and stretched managed-money length is a very different setup from the same curve with vaults filling up.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between eligible and registered metal?

Both sit in the same exchange-approved vaults and both meet the contract specification. Registered metal has an exchange warrant issued against it and can be delivered against an expiring futures contract; eligible metal has no warrant and is simply private storage. The difference is commitment, not availability: eligible metal is not deliverable as it stands, but its owner can request a warrant at any time. Read it as supply that has a price rather than supply that is locked away — the constraint is whether owners want to sell, not whether the metal can be reached.

Does a fall in registered stocks mean metal left the vault?

Not necessarily. Registered metal becomes eligible whenever a warrant is cancelled, which commonly happens after someone takes delivery and chooses to leave the metal in storage. That shows up as registered falling and eligible rising while the total is unchanged — no metal moved. Only a change in the total column means metal physically entered or left the depository.

Which metals and exchanges does this page cover?

Gold and silver trade on COMEX; platinum and palladium trade on NYMEX. Both are CME Group exchanges, and both publish daily depository stocks in troy ounces, which is what the metal tabs on this page switch between.

What are the "Enhanced Delivery" depository lines?

They belong to a separate COMEX gold contract, Gold Enhanced Delivery (4GC), listed in April 2020 when pandemic disruption at refineries and in air freight left London 400-ounce Good Delivery bars undeliverable against the standard contract. The label is easy to misread: those rows cover 400-ounce bars plus any kilo or 100-ounce bars whose brands are approved only for 4GC, while kilo and 100-ounce bars good for both contracts stay in the regular depository stocks. Treat Enhanced Delivery as a separate deliverable pool — in practice it holds almost entirely eligible metal, because the contract never displaced the standard gold future.

Source and official references

Source: CME Group daily metals depository (warehouse) stocks reports for COMEX and NYMEX, published each business day in troy ounces. Figures reflect the report date shown on the card above, not real time.

Warehouse stocks show what metal is available to deliver; delivery notices show what is actually being delivered. CME Group publishes both on the same clearing page — the daily notices, meaning the issues and stops filed against each metals contract, alongside the depository stock reports this page is built from. Reading the two together is how desks follow a delivery month as it unfolds.