Online trading major Interactive Brokers has added support for physical delivery of the following precious metals futures on COMEX: Gold (GC), Micro-Gold (MGC), Silver (SI) and Micro-Silver. Clients who trade these futures can now declare their intent to make or take delivery of the physical product rather than roll or auto-liquidate these positions.

When the intent to take delivery is declared, delivery is made in the form of a registered warrant. This warrant allows clients to maintain their exposure to the product without needing to roll the associated future and incur trade costs.

To accept physical delivery, you must declare your intent prior to the Delivery Window, which is generally one month prior to the last trading day of the futures contract. If you do not declare your intent, the system will take the default action which is to liquidate the futures position. The cost of taking delivery of a warrant is:

Settlement Price (assigned by COMEX) x Weight x Fineness + Storage Costs

Use the Futures Physical Delivery Tool to declare your intent to take (or for a short position to make) physical delivery. To access this feature for a specific future, right-click the eligible futures position and select Delivery. To open and display all eligible futures positions, use the New Window drop-down to select Advanced Trading Tools and then Delivery Intent. In the Take Delivery/Make Delivery field for a specific position, enter the number of contracts for which you want to take/make delivery.

To declare your intent for these precious metals you must follow one of these workflows:

• Intent to Receive

Submitting intent to receive indicates the desire to take delivery of the product at the end of the delivery window (in the form of a certified Warrant or ACE). It is also REQUIRED to open new Futures positions during the delivery window (e.g. it is not possible to open a physically-deliverable futures position, during the delivery window, without first submitting the Intent to Receive for that Future). Any Intents to Receive that do not have a corresponding Futures position at the end of the delivery window will be cancelled.

• Intent to Deliver

Submitting intent to deliver indicates the desire to make delivery of a product (e.g. Warrant or ACE). It is also REQUIRED that the account is both short an eligible Futures position and has the corresponding certificate to provide. Any Intents to Deliver that do not have corresponding Future positions at the end of the delivery window will be canceled.

• Request to Deliver

Submitting a request to deliver is ONLY available during the delivery window and indicates a desire to deliver the product that day (instead of at the end of the delivery window, as with the intent to deliver). It is REQUIRED that to submit this request an account must have an existing, eligible product (e.g. Warrant or ACE) and corresponding short Future position (e.g. GC, MGC etc.).

As FX News Group reported earlier this month, Interactive Brokers has launched US GOLD, enabling clients to trade U.S. spot gold in amounts as small as one ounce, side-by-side with other asset classes from a single, integrated account.