Exactly one month ago we observed that, as expected in the aftermath of the Netherlands' shocking and still not fully-explained gold repatriation from the NY Fed, the amount of foreign earmarked gold on deposit with the Fed had just experienced a 42 ton withdrawal: the single largest outflow of gold held at the NY Fed in over a decade, going back all the way to 2001. This had brought the total amount of YTD gold withdrawals from the NY Fed to a whopping 119 tons: the most since the Lehman collapse.

However, because this total was insufficient to cover just the Dutch repatriation of gold from the NY Fed (which amounted to 122 tons), we knew there would be more activity when the November data hit. Sure enough, earlier today the Fed reported the total amount of earmarked gold (or gold "held in foreign and international accounts and valued at $42.22 per fine troy ounce; not included in the gold stock of the United States") for the month of November: at $8.184 billion, this was a $60 million drop from the previous month (or it would be at the $42.22/ounce "price"; at market prices the value of the withdrawn gold is about $1.7 billion).