Morgan Stanley Quants: Over $4 Billion In Forced Selling In Gold, Silver ETFs Today

For those following the carnage in paper gold and silver, i.e., GLD and SLV, and especially such across levered precious metal names such as UGL and AGQ, here is what you may have to look forward to, courtesy of Morgan Stanley's Quant desk: 

• Levered ETF rebalancing needs are ~$3.5bn to sell in SLV and ~$650mm to sell in GLD today on QDS estimates.

• SLV and GLD are having their worst days since 2006 (-13 zScore move in SLV and -9 zScore move in GLD).

• On QDS estimates, CTAs are estimated to be net long $5bn of silver (94th %ile vs the last 5y) and long $15bn of gold (56th %ile vs the last 5y).

The forced liquidations come on a historic day for silver, which plunged as much as 35% to today's session lows, before recovering some of the losses.

It wasn't immediately clear how much of the selling has already taken place, and how much is on pace for the last 2 hours of trading, but it is clear that much of today's move has already been reflected in levered ETF, such as today's historic 65% drop in the AGQ 2x levered silver etf, the biggest on record by far!