BullionStar Blogs

LBMA Gold Vault Data: How Low is the London Gold Float?

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• Ronan Manly
• 8 Comments

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The LBMA has just released its first update on the quantities of physical gold and physical silver stored in the LBMA vaulting network in London. This network comprises precious metals vaults of 7 commercial operators and also the Bank of England gold vaults. As of the end of March, there are said to be about a combined 7,450 tonnes of gold and 32,000 tonnes of silver across these... Continue Reading

The West Lost Over 1000 Tonnes of Gold in 2015

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• Ronan Manly
• 6 Comments

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One of the most important trends in the physical gold world is the ongoing depletion of Western gold inventories to supply the relentless demand for high purity small bar denominations (such as kilogram gold bars). Most of this demand is coming from Asian markets such as China and India. Most of this supply is coming from the London gold market.

Based on LBMA gold refinery... Continue Reading

Estimated Chinese Gold Reserves Surpass 20,000t

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• Koos Jansen

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My best estimate as of June 2017 with respect to total above ground gold reserves within the Chinese domestic market is 20,193 tonnes. The majority of these reserves are held by the citizenry, an estimated 16,193 tonnes; the residual 4,000 tonnes, which is a speculative yet conservative estimate, is held by the Chinese central bank the People’s Bank of China. Continue Reading

July 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The July edition of BullionStar’s monthly gold chart analysis has now been published to the BullionStar website.

Physical gold demand in all of the world’s largest physical gold markets remains strong, from robust Indian gold imports to consistently strong gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange. The Russian central bank continues to patiently accumulate further... Continue Reading

Did the Dutch Central Bank Lie About Its Gold Bar List?

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• Koos Jansen

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The Dutch central bank states that releasing a bar list of the Dutch gold “would cost hundreds of thousands of euros”. In this post we’ll expose this is virtually impossible. Continue Reading

PBOC Gold Purchases: Separating Facts from Speculation

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• Koos Jansen

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This post is part of the Chinese Gold Market essentials series. Click here to go to an overview of all Chinese Gold Market Essentials for a comprehensive understanding of the largest physical gold market globally. This post was updated late 2017. In this post we will analyze everything there is to learn about PBOC gold purchases. Grasping the exact size of … Continue Reading

Is the COMEX Rigged?

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• Ronan Manly
• 11 Comments

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Many people will by now have heard of COMEX gold futures price 'flash crashes' during which the gold price collapses in free fall fashion over a few second interval. Whether these flash crashes are the result of trading errors, futures market illiquidity, computerized trading patterns or deliberately engineered moves is debateable.

But beyond the actual flash crash incidents on... Continue Reading

CME Stays Silent on Cause of COMEX Silver Price Glitch

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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Following an incident which caused a large rapid drop in COMEX gold futures prices last week, this week was the turn of COMEX silver where a short-lived and rapid ‘flash crash’ caused the price of COMEX silver futures prices to fall by more than 10% within 1 minute only to rebound strongly in the subsequent minute. While the CME Group which operates the COMEX has not provided an... Continue Reading

Bullion Banks Line Up to Support LME’s Gold Futures

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• Ronan Manly
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The London Metal Exchange (LME) is about to launch a range of new gold and silver futures in the London market (LMEprecious). Crucially though, these gold futures do not deliver physical gold or silver. Instead they transfer around unallocated gold and unallocated silver, units of which are fractionally-backed in the London precious metals markets.

This LME development is also... Continue Reading

How Many Silver Bars Are in the LBMA's London Vaults?

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• Ronan Manly
• 4 Comments

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BullionStar has previously analyzed how many gold bars are in the LBMA London gold vaults. Now we turn our attention to how many real physical silver bars are in those same LBMA London vaults. The subject is topical because the LBMA is about to start reporting the total quantity of both gold and silver stored in its network of vaults in London.

But whereas with gold, the vast... Continue Reading

June 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The June edition of BullionStar’s monthly gold chart analysis has now been published to the BullionStar website. The featured charts have been created by the Gold Charts R US market chart website.

This monthly series analyses recent developments in the world’s largest physical gold markets such as India, China, Russia and Switzerland. During May, Russia added a sizeable 22... Continue Reading

Are the World’s Billionaire Investors Actually Buying Gold?

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• Ronan Manly
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The mainstream financial media regularly records the interest in gold from some of the world’s most famous hedge fund managers. But are these legendary investors, all of whom are billionaires, actually buying real physical gold, or are they using paper proxies such as gold futures, gold-backed ETFs, or even gold mining stocks? This new article from BullionStar aims to find out, and... Continue Reading

Our Extensive Range of Royal Mint Gold & Silver Coins

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• BullionStar
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BullionStar carries an extensive range of investment grade gold bullion coins and silver bullion coins minted by Britain’s famous Royal Mint. The Royal Mint is fully owned by Her Majesty’s Treasury and has the distinction of being the world’s oldest mint. BullionStar’s range of Royal Mint bullion coins includes gold and silver Britannia coins, gold … Continue Reading

May 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The May edition of BullionStar’s monthly gold chart analysis has now been added to the BullionStar website. This monthly series features the latest developments in the world’s physical gold markets and this month includes discussion of Indian gold imports, adjustments to Shanghai Gold Exchange gold withdrawal figures, the relatively low addition of gold reserves by the Russian... Continue Reading

Buy and Sell Gold and Silver With Bitcoin

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• BullionStar
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Following Bitcoin's recent strong price appreciation, Bitcoin holders may be thinking of taking profits or diversifying some of their Bitcoin position into physical precious metals. It is therefore interesting to know that BullionStar's online transactional website fully supports Bitcoin and has done so since May 2014.

Using BullionStar's website, customers can buy gold and... Continue Reading

New Gold Pool at the BIS Basel: Part 2

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• Ronan Manly
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Following last week’s publication of “New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle, Switzerland, Part 1”, there now follows Part 2 of this two-part series. Part 2 continues to examine how in the early 1980s, the world's most powerful central bankers who met at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland called for the launch of a central bank Gold Pool cartel so as to manipulate... Continue Reading

An Update on SGE Vault Withdrawals & Price Premiums

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• Ronan Manly
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With four months of gold withdrawal data now released by the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) covering January to April, the year 2017 is shaping up to be one of very high gold demand in the Chinese market. SGE gold withdrawal figures are a suitable proxy to measure wholesale Chinese gold demand because nearly all gold entering the market is required to flow through the Exchange. SGE gold... Continue Reading

New Gold Pool at the BIS Basel, Switzerland: Part 1

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• Ronan Manly
• 7 Comments

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Many people are familiar with the London Gold Pool which operated between 1961 and 1968 to control the price of gold in the London gold market. But very few people are aware that more than 11 years later, the same set of Western central banks, at central bank governor level, met in secrecy at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) over an extended period during 1979 and 1980 and... Continue Reading

SGE Trading Surged 43% in 2016 Led by OTC & Deferred Trading

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• Ronan Manly
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Trading volumes on the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), the world's largest physical gold trading venue, have nearly tripled over the last 3 years. Full year volumes for 2016 came in at over 24,300 tonnes, a 43% rise on 2015's 17,000 tonnes. The equivalent figure for 2014 was 9243 tonnes. Much of the growth in volumes is coming from OTC trading of the 1 kilogram 9999 fine gold contract,... Continue Reading

LBMA Confirms Upcoming Publication of London Gold Holdings

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has now confirmed that it will begin publishing gold and silver holdings data for the London based commercial precious vaults sometime during the summer of 2017. Details on this new data are still sketchy as the press release issued by the LBMA has not confirmed in what format the data will be issued, what historical time periods if any will... Continue Reading

April 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The latest edition of BullionStar’s monthly gold chart analysis has now been published. This month’s article features charts capturing current developments in the world’s physical gold markets including the latest Swiss gold import and export numbers, as well as Russian gold reserve accumulation, Shanghai Gold Exchange withdrawals, COMEX gold inventories, and the continued gold... Continue Reading

Bank of England Releases New Data On its Gold Vault Holdings

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• Ronan Manly
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The Bank of England has just published new data on its website detailing month-end gold custody holdings for gold held within its vaults. This data covers every month for the last 6 years i.e. from January 2012 to December 2016. Going forward, the Bank of England will publish updates to this data with a 3 month lag. The new gold vault data will be very useful for seeing the ebbs and... Continue Reading

Sweden’s Gold Reserves: 10,000 Gold Bars Shrouded in Secrecy

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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In October 2013, the Swedish central bank, the Riksbank, for the first time revealed the storage locations of its sizeable gold bar reserves. Sweden claims to hold 125.7 tonnes of gold scattered across central bank gold vaults in New York, London, Canada, Switzerland and also in Sweden. At the time, the Riksbank also claimed it was going to start to physically audit this gold. Fast... Continue Reading

Death Spiral for the LBMA Gold & Silver Auctions?

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• Ronan Manly
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This week the LBMA Silver Price and LBMA Gold Price daily auctions were both hit by unusual price movements over two consecutive days, on 10 April and 11 April. In both cases, the prices being quoted in the auctions deviated noticeably from their respective spot prices. There is little information on what exactly happened in the silver auction since none of CME (calculation agent),... Continue Reading

Germany's Heraeus Acquires Swiss Gold Refiner Argor-Heraeus

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• Ronan Manly
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Following the July 2015 acquisition of Swiss gold and silver Valcambi by Indian group Rajesh Exports, and the July 2016 acquisition of Swiss precious metals refiner Metalor Technologies by Japanese Tanaka Precious Metals, it has now been announced that German industrial group Heraeus, a leading precious refiner, has moved to fully acquire the giant Argor-Heraeus gold and silver refinery... Continue Reading

What Sets the Gold Price – the Paper or Physical Market?

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• BullionStar
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Everyone involved in the global gold market is aware of the gold price, the price that is constantly quoted in the financial media. But where does this gold price come from, i.e. where is it discovered? Is the gold price formed through the massive trading volumes of the paper gold markets such as the COMEX gold futures markets and London OTC unallocated gold market, or is the gold price... Continue Reading

March 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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BullionStar’s monthly gold chart wrap-up highlights major themes in the world’s largest gold markets using up-to-date charts from the extensive GoldChartsRUSs website. This month’s selection includes updates on Russian central bank gold reserve accumulation, Swiss gold import and export destinations, patterns in gold-backed ETF inflows and outflows, and Chinese gold demand through... Continue Reading

BullionStar Financials FY 2016 – Year in Review

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• BullionStar
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BullionStar has adopted a transparent approach in releasing BullionStar financials i.e. information about the company's overall performance and sales data for each financial year. This blog post presents the financials as they stood at the end of the financial year 2016. FY 2016 was a very strong year for BullionStar with sales revenues totaling SGD 134,200,000, a 111.7% increase from... Continue Reading

Mexico’s Earmarked Gold Bars in Bank of England Vaults

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• Ronan Manly
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In response to a Freedom of Information Request by Mexican financial writer Guillermo Barba, Mexico’s central bank Banixco, has just a released a quite comprehensive list of 7265 gold bars that it holds in the Bank of England’s gold vaults. This is unusual in that very few central banks ever allow publication of such a list. While the Banixco list does not include real serial... Continue Reading

Bad News for the LBMA Silver Price, But Also an Opportunity

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• Ronan Manly
• 6 Comments

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News that Thomson Reuters and the CME intend to abandon ship as administrator and calculation agent of the LBMA Silver Price auction has raised more than a few eyebrows, especially since they appear to be linking the exit to the introduction of new European Benchmark Regulations. Whatever the reason for their departure mid-way through their service provision contract, it now provides a... Continue Reading

Germany’s Gold Remains a Mystery

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• Ronan Manly
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The Deutsche Bundesbank’s announcement in early February that it had moved 300 tonnes of gold from the New York Fed to Frankfurt in a laughable 4 years threw the mainstream financial media into a back-slapping frenzy as they rushed to congratulate the German central bank for an exercise that should have only taken a couple of weeks to complete. Back in 1967 and 1968, the very same NY... Continue Reading

February 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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This is the 4th in a series of new posts from BullionStar showcasing a selection of gold market charts from Nick Laird’s extensive GoldChartsRUs website. The selected charts focus on major themes from the world's largest gold markets such as Swiss and UK gold imports and exports, CHINDIA gold demand (Chinese gold demand and Indian gold imports) and Russian Federation central bank gold... Continue Reading

U.S. Mint Releases New Fort Knox Audit Documentation

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• Koos Jansen

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In response to my FOIA request the US Mint has finally released reports related to the physical audits of the US official gold reserves drafted from 1993 through 2008. However the documents released are incomplete and reveal the audit procedures have not been executed proficiently. Moreover, because the Mint could not honor its promises in full the costs ($3,144.96 US dollars) of the... Continue Reading

Infographic: Bullion Banking Mechanics

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• BullionStar
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Bullion banking is a commonly used term, but what does it refer to? And who are these bullion banks? This new infographic from BullionStar guides you through the shadowy world of bullion banking centred in the City of London, and looks at the paper gold creation process, how the banks use unallocated gold accounts to allow the trading of gigantic amounts of fictitious gold, and how the... Continue Reading

A Chink of Light Into London’s Gold Vaults?

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• Ronan Manly
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A chink of light may be about to shine on the gold bars held in the London Gold Market vaults. Both the Bank of England and London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) have announced that relatively soon, they will begin to publish data on the quantity of gold physically held in the series of vaults that make up the London gold vaulting network. More data than less is always welcome,... Continue Reading

China Net Imported 1,300t of Gold in 2016

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• Koos Jansen

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For 2016 international merchandise trade statistics point out China has net imported roughly 1,300 tonnes of gold, down 17 % from 2015. The importance of measuring gold imports into the Chinese domestic gold market - which are prohibited from being back exported – is to come to the best understanding on the division of above ground reserves in and outside of the Chinese domestic... Continue Reading

Lukewarm Start For New London Gold Futures Contracts

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• Ronan Manly
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In late 2016, three financial exchange providers each announced in rapid succession the launch of a London based gold futures contract. These providers are the London Metal Exchange (LME), Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), and the CME Group. ICE and CME gold futures contracts have gone live in the last 2 weeks, but neither has seen a single trade. LME plans to launch its gold futures... Continue Reading

Ireland's Gold Reserves: High Level Secrecy vs. FOI – Part 2

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• Ronan Manly
• 5 Comments

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This article, the second in a series, looks at the difficulty experience in obtaining basic information out of the Central Bank of Ireland about Ireland's monetary gold reserves, even while using a Freedom of Information request. The Request was refused, and then on appeal partially actioned. However, throughout the process there was a feeling that the Central Bank was not divulging the... Continue Reading

January 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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This is the 3rd in a series of new posts from BullionStar that showcase a selection of gold market charts from Nick Laird’s extensive GoldChartsRUs website. The selected charts focus on major themes from the world's largest gold markets such as Chinese gold demand, Indian gold imports, Russian central bank gold holdings, and Swiss gold imports and exports. Each month these BullionStar... Continue Reading

Why SGE Withdrawals Equal Chinese Gold Demand and Why Not

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• Koos Jansen

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This post is part of the Chinese Gold Market Essentials series. Click here to go to an overview of all Chinese Gold Market Essentials for a comprehensive understanding of the largest physical gold market globally. This post was updated in 2017. The difference between SGE withdrawals and Chinese consumer gold demand as disclosed by GFMS has aggregated to … Continue Reading

Ireland's Gold Reserves: High Level Secrecy vs. FOI

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• Ronan Manly
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Obtaining basic details about central bank gold holdings is a subject which without exception the mainstream financial media never appears to broach. However, various independent researchers have documented attempts at obtaining such details of sovereign / central bank gold holdings. This article (Part 1) and its sequel (Part 2) add to the documented evidence by summarising how a series... Continue Reading

Who Owns the World’s Largest Gold Hoards?

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• Ronan Manly
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Given that central banks are extremely secretive about 'their' gold reserves, it's important to note that the majority of these central banks do not even own the gold that they go to great lengths to hide the details of. In most cases, the sovereign states which the central banks answer to own the gold. Taken to its logical conclusion, the citizens of the sovereign states own the gold,... Continue Reading

How The West Has Been Selling Gold Into A Black Hole

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• Koos Jansen

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Western gold sell-offs are transhipped to China but can't return. This will make gold rally stronger in a future bull market than it did in previous bull markets. Continue Reading

Infographic: Gold Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) Mechanics

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• BullionStar
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Gold-backed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are a product class that has grown rapidly in recent years. The financial media regularly reports on the gold holdings within these products, and the customer bases of these ETFs include both institutional and retail investors. But what exactly are the mechanics of these products, what do they provide and not provide to their holders, and what... Continue Reading

The Chinese Gold Lease Market Explained

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• Koos Jansen

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This post is part of the Chinese Gold Market Essentials series. Click here to go to an overview of all Chinese Gold Market Essentials for a comprehensive understanding of the largest physical gold market globally. This post was updated late 2017. The main arguments presented by Western consultancy firms, such as GFMS and the World Gold Council … Continue Reading

December 2016 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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This is the 2nd in a series of new posts from BullionStar which feature a selection of gold charts from the excellent Gold Charts R Us website. The charts reviewed are chosen so as to capture some of the most important macro trends in the global gold market such as Chinese and Indian gold demand, Russian central bank gold reserve accumulation, flows of gold in and out of the giant Swiss... Continue Reading

China’s Gold Market to Boost RMB Internationalization

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• Koos Jansen

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Last week the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) launched a new English website to offer international customers more tools on trading gold in renminbi through the Shanghai International Gold Exchange (SGEI). BullionStar took the opportunity to translate a speech by a Teng Wei, Deputy General Manager of the SGEI, named “How China’s Gold Market Can Help The RMB Achieve International... Continue Reading

COMEX & ICE Vault Reports Overstate Gold Inventories

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• Ronan Manly
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Gold futures trade in New York on both the COMEX & ICE exchanges. Both exchanges also utilize the same network of approved gold vault facilities located in and around New York City. However, neither the ICE vault report nor the COMEX vault report takes account of the other Exchange's registered gold. Therefore both reports overstate the true amount of eligible gold in each of the... Continue Reading

Gold Price Down, Chinese Demand Strong Despite Import Curbs

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• Koos Jansen

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From the moment Donald J. Trump got elected as the next President of the United States, on November 8, 2016, the price of gold tumbled 8 % in the remainder of the month – from $1,282 USD/oz to $1,178 USD/oz. Usually these cascades in the gold price go hand in hand with physical sell-offs in the West … Continue Reading

How to Trigger a Silver Avalanche by a Pebble

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• Ronan Manly
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UBS and other precious metals traders on how to wreak havoc in silver markets Written by Allan Flynn, specialist researcher in aspects of gold and silver. “An avalanche can be triggered by a pebble if you get the timing right" Earlier this year at April’s hearings for London Silver and Gold Fix lawsuits, the judge and … Continue Reading