BullionStar Blogs

Why the Dutch Central Bank Refuses To Publish Gold Bar List

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• Koos Jansen

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My hunt for the gold bar list of the Dutch official gold reserves started in 2015. On September 26 of that year I visited a conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, called Reinvent Money. One of the speakers was Jacob De Haan from the Dutch central bank (DNB) Economics and Research Division – you can watch his presentation by clicking here. … Continue Reading

Is There Any Gold Bullion Stored at the U.S. Mint in Denver?

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• Ronan Manly
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Anyone with even a passing interest in US official gold reserves will probably recall that the US Treasury claims to hold its gold (8,133.5 tonnes) over four locations in continental United States, namely at three US Mint facilities in Fort Knox (Kentucky), West Point (upstate New York), Denver (Colorado), and at the New York Fed … Continue Reading

Song Xin: Increase Gold Reserves & Join SDR

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• Koos Jansen

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The Chairman of the China Gold Association and General Manager and Party Committee Secretary of China National Gold Group Corporation, the latter being China’s largest gold mining enterprise, is Song Xin and happens to be one of my favorite commentators in China. This gentleman made waves in July 2014 when he candidly wrote on Sina … Continue Reading

The World’s largest Precious Metals Refineries

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• BullionStar
• 13 Comments

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There are many precious metals refineries throughout the world, some local to their domestic markets, and some international, even global in scale. Many, but by no means all, of these refineries are on the Good Delivery Lists of gold and/or silver. These lists are maintained by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and they identify … Continue Reading

The Power Of The Gold Community

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• Koos Jansen

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Since 2014 I’ve been investigating the alleged audits of the US official gold reserves. Of course my goal is to figure out if these audits are credible, or if they’re invented by the US government to silence the people that think gold has any value and forms the very material basis for a well-functioning monetary system. My … Continue Reading

Spectacular Chinese Gold Demand Denied by Mainstream Media

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• Koos Jansen

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Debunking the Thomson Reuters GFMS Gold Survey 2016 report. New information provides a more detailed perspective on the Chinese domestic gold market. In the Gold Survey 2016 report by GFMS that covers the global gold market for calendar year 2015 Chinese gold consumption was assessed at 867 tonnes. As Chinese wholesale demand, measured by withdrawals … Continue Reading

The Gold Price & Global Flows

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• Koos Jansen

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On a firmly rising gold price the UK is one of the largest net importers of gold in 2016. The gold price went up 25 % from $1,061.5 dollars per troy ounce on January 1 to $1,325.8 on June 31. Over this period the UK net imported 583 tonnes and GLD inventory mushroomed by 308 tonnes. In … Continue Reading

Infographic: China's Gold Market

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• BullionStar
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This Chinese Gold Market infographic guides you through the largest physical gold trading market in the world, China. An impressive 16,000 tonnes of gold are held within China’s borders. Did you know that the Chinese wholesale demand for physical gold was an astounding 2,596 metric tonnes in 2015? This was supplied by China mining more … Continue Reading

Stockpiles: the Key to Gold as a Store of Value & Safe Haven

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• BullionStar
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Much is written in the precious metals world about gold’s characteristics, as well as how the behaviour of the gold price allows gold to play the role of a unique financial asset that retains purchasing power over time, acts as a safe haven asset, diversifies risk, and provides hedging benefits. However, much of the material written … Continue Reading

More Paper Trading Ahead For London Gold & Silver Markets

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• Ronan Manly
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Today the London Metal Exchange (LME) and the World Gold Council (WGC) jointly announced (here and here) the launch next year of standardised gold and silver spot and futures contracts which will trade on the LME’s electronic platform LMESelect, will clear on the LME central clearing platform LME Clear, and that will be settled ‘loco London’. Together these … Continue Reading

Australia Confirms Our Analysis On Gold Exports to China

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• Koos Jansen

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Since 2015 I’ve stated the raw data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on gold export to China mainland do not accurately reflect what is imported by China from the land of down under. In my previous post I’ve written Australia’s gold “export to China” should be adjusted by Hong Kong’s gold “import from Australia” as a … Continue Reading

“How Safe is Your Gold?” – Speech by Torgny Persson

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• BullionStar
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The following is the transcript of a presentation made by BullionStar’s CEO Torgny Persson on 14 July 2016 to an audience at the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, USA: Liberty is Prevailing Freedom, ladies and gentleman. Freedom is the right to think, speak and act the way that we want. I think I speak for … Continue Reading

GLD Sponsor Dodges Disclosure Details of Sub-Custodian

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• Ronan Manly
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In a July 11 BullionStar article, “SPDR Gold Trust gold bars at the Bank of England vaults”, I highlighted that the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), in it’s Q1 2016 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), disclosed that during the January – March 2016 quarter, the GLD custodian HSBC had employed the Bank of England as … Continue Reading

Austrian Mint Sells 41 Tonnes of Gold Coins & Bars in 2015

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• Ronan Manly
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Earlier this year, the director of marketing and sales at the Austrian Mint confirmed to Bloomberg in an interview that the Mint’s combined gold bar and gold coin sales in 2015 had totalled 1.32 million troy ounces, a 45% increase on 2014, while the Mint’s silver sales in 2015 had reached 7.3 million ounces, a … Continue Reading

The Revolving Door at the GLD Gold Trust as Execs Flee

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• Ronan Manly
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A remarkable but little noticed development has occurred behind the scenes of the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) over the last 3 years. This development concerns the very high level of executive staff turnover at World Gold Trust Services, the New York based ‘Sponsor’ of the mammoth gold GLD gold-backed Exchange Traded Fund that is listed … Continue Reading

Wrap-Up of Our Visit to FreedomFest 2016

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• BullionStar
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Saturday July 16 wrapped up BullionStar’s attendance at its first FreedomFest conference and convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. During the event from Wednesday July 13 through to the Saturday afternoon, the BullionStar team interacted with a wide-range of interesting event attendees, discussing topics ranging from the role of precious metals in investors portfolios, to the safety... Continue Reading

Rand Paul at FreedomFest 2016 & BullionStar’s New Game

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• BullionStar
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BullionStar continues its coverage of the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas which it is attending and exhibiting at. For previous coverage see “BullionStar exhibiting at FreedomFest in Las Vegas" and “How Safe is your Gold?” – BullionStar CEO’s speech at FreedomFest“. Rand Paul’s Speech U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican representative of Kentucky in... Continue Reading

"How Safe is Your Gold?” – Our FreedomFest Presentation

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• BullionStar
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The first full day of the FreedomFest conference took place 14 July in Las Vegas, USA, an event at which BullionStar is attending and exhibiting. Conference proceedings took the form of general speaker and panel sessions in a large auditorium in the morning, and multiple breakout sessions of speakers and panel discussions in the afternoon. … Continue Reading

BullionStar Exhibiting at FreedomFest in Las Vegas

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• BullionStar
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This week BullionStar is attending and exhibiting at a unique conference called FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Nevada. FreedomFest is the largest pro-liberty conference in the world and it has taken place annually in Las Vegas since 2002. The event was founded and is still organized by Mark Skousen. This year’s FreedomFest event runs from Wednesday … Continue Reading

SPDR Gold Trust Gold Bars Being Held at the Bank of England

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• Ronan Manly
• 12 Comments

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One of the most notable developments accompanying the gold price rally of 2016 has been the very large additions to the gold bar holdings of the major physically backed gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). This is especially true of the SPDR Gold Trust (ticker GLD). The gold bar holdings of the SPDR Gold Trust peaked at 1353 … Continue Reading

Chinese Gold Demand 973t In H1 2016

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• Koos Jansen

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Chinese wholesale gold demand, as measured by withdrawals from the vaults of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), reached a sizable 973 metric tonnes in the first half of 2016, down 7 % compared to last year. Although Chinese gold demand year to date at 973 tonnes is slightly down from its record year in 2015 – … Continue Reading

Bullion Coin Sales Boost Mints' Revenues

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• BullionStar
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The world’s major precious metals mints are currently riding high on the back of extremely strong global bullion coin demand and relatively buoyant gold and silver prices. These mints are predominantly run as commercial enterprises. The sheer scale of revenues that the US Mint, Royal Canadian Mint (RCM), Perth Mint and Austrian Mint have been … Continue Reading

Gold & Brexit

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• BullionStar
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In what was an extraordinary day for global financial markets, and a day which will no doubt become legendary and enter folk memory in the UK and elsewhere, the electorate of the United Kingdom voted 51.9 % to 48.1% to leave the European Union. As the first count results began trickling in during the very … Continue Reading

Saving in Gold vs. Investing in Gold

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• BullionStar
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There are differing views on choosing the optimal percentage of gold to hold in an asset portfolio. These different viewpoints depend on how one views gold. Those looking for a return on their money in currency terms perceive gold as an investment which they can sell at a currency price higher than what they bought … Continue Reading

Paper Currencies Are Worthless

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• BullionStar
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16 June 2021 is exactly five years from today. What will the gold price be on 16 June 2021? Currencies are Worthless As the world’s fiat paper currencies have lost 99% or more of their purchasing power over the last 100 years, its critical to understand that fiat paper currencies are not a suitable unit … Continue Reading

Central Bank, Governments and Their Gold Coin Holdings

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• Ronan Manly
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Within the world of central bank and government gold reserves, there is often an assumption that these gold holdings consist entirely of gold bullion bars. While this is true in some cases, it is not the fully story because many central banks and governments, such as the US, France, Italy, Switzerland, the UK and Venezuela, … Continue Reading

An Update On LBMA Refinery Statistics & GFMS

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• Ronan Manly
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Last year I published two posts featuring the 2013 refinery production statistics of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) Good Delivery Refiners (gold and silver). The first post, “Moving the goalposts….The LBMA’s shifting stance on gold refinery production statistics“, looked primarily at how, in May 2015, the LBMA had first published a 2013 gold refining output... Continue Reading

Offshore Bullion Storage or 3 Eggs?

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• BullionStar
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What does one hundred trillion dollars buy you? How about a mansion in every country, an airplane at every airport and a private island in every ocean? How about 3 eggs? When Zimbabwe issued its infamous 100 000 000 000 000 dollar bill, it could buy 3 eggs on the day it was issued. A … Continue Reading

Spotlight on LPMCL: London Precious Metals Clearing Limited

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• Ronan Manly
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Within the last 2 months, there have been a series of developments in the London Gold Market, each of which has involved Chinese-controlled banking group ICBC Standard Bank Plc. On 4 April, the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) announced that ICBC Standard Bank had been reclassified as a LBMA Market Making member for the OTC spot … Continue Reading

LPPM: The London Platinum & Palladium Market

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• Ronan Manly
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The platinum and palladium markets arguably receive more focus during the third week of May than at any other time of the year. This is due to a series of events hosted in London known as London Platinum Week. London Platinum Week, which also covers other platinum group metals such as palladium, is coordinated by … Continue Reading

Infographic: COMEX Gold Futures Market

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• BullionStar
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This COMEX Gold Futures Market infographic guides you through the largest gold futures market in the world, COMEX. Did you for example know that only 1 in 2500 contracts on COMEX goes to physical delivery whereas the other 2499 contracts are cash-settled? This corresponds to a delivery percentage of 0.04% of all gold contracts. The US … Continue Reading

Lars Schall Interview With Ronan Manly, April 2016

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• Ronan Manly
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I was recently interviewed by financial journalist Lars Schall on behalf of Swiss based Matterhorn Asset Management. Our interview covered the German and Russian gold markets, Venezuela’s official gold reserves, the secrecy of the London gold market, and the outlook for the gold price, among a number of other topics. Matterhorn kindly granted me permission to … Continue Reading

Infographic: The London Gold Market

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• BullionStar
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This London Gold Market infographic guides you through the secretive OTC wholesale gold market in London. The London Gold Market is the largest gold market in the world and the volumes traded are staggering. The London Market serves as a price discovery market for the worldwide gold spot price and is home to the London Bullion … Continue Reading

Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price: New Kid on the Block

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• Ronan Manly
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Exactly 19 months to the day after the International Board of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) held its first full trading session on 19 September 2014, the Shanghai Gold Exchange launched the Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price auction on 19 April 2016. In China, the number 19 is very auspicious since it consists of lucky number … Continue Reading

Profiles of Key Gold Vaults Around the World

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• BullionStar
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Many topics in the world of gold are opaque and secretive, none more so than the famed gold vaults of the world’s major central banks and their bullion banking counterparts. BullionStar Gold University is now bringing transparency to this intriguing yet under-reported area by profiling the largest and most important of these gold vaults. According … Continue Reading

HSBC’s London Vault: Is This Gold’s Secret Hiding Place?

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• Ronan Manly
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HSBC’s main gold vault in London regularly comes under the media spotlight for a number of reasons. These reasons include: a) the HSBC London vault stores a very large amount of gold on behalf of gold-backed Exchange Traded Funds, primarily the well-known SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) b) along with the Bank of England vaults and … Continue Reading

新加坡贵金属市场行情 - 投资储藏黄金白银新的好地方

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• BullionStar
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每当谈到东南亚首屈一指的金融以及财富管理中心,就一定会提到新加坡这个国家。我们观察一下新加坡所佔的一些优势，其实不难看出其中的原因。这些优势包括了强力的政府支持，优越的地理位置，较低的犯罪率,世界级的基础设施, 和中立友善的政治方针。... Continue Reading

Silver Bullion in Singapore

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• BullionStar
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Singapore is one of the best jurisdictions in the world for buying silver bullion. Both silver coins and silver bars are exempted from GST in Singapore. For physical silver bars the criteria is that the silver bar has to be produced by an LBMA-approved refinery and be of a minimum purity of 99.9% silver. For … Continue Reading

Deutsche Bank to Settle With London Silver Fixing Plaintiffs

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• Ronan Manly
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In a surprising development, a group of plaintiffs in an antitrust litigation case against Deutsche Bank, HSBC Bank plc, the Bank of Nova Scotia, and UBS AG, have just announced that Deutsche Bank is in the process of negotiating the formal terms of a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs. Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Scotia are the … Continue Reading

Hong Hong's Gold Vaults: Brinks, Loomis, Malca Amit, G4S

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• Ronan Manly
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The article “From Good Delivery bars to Kilobars – The Swiss Refineries, the GFMS data, and the LBMA" examined the mountain of evidence concerning the known Swiss conversion of Good Delivery bars into kilobars for export to gold markets in the East. As a further step in this process, it’s worth taking a look at the … Continue Reading

SGX Kilobar Gold Contract vs. Trading with BullionStar

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• Ronan Manly
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When Singapore Exchange (SGX) launched a physically-delivered gold kilobar contract in October 2014, there was much fanfare from the contract’s promoters (SGX, World Gold Council, IE Singapore and the Singapore Bullion Market Association) that the SGX Gold Kilobar would kick-start exchange-based gold kilobar trading in the Singapore gold market, while providing liquidity, price... Continue Reading

BullionStar’s Visit to the World Money Fair in Berlin

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• BullionStar
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In early February, I visited the World Money Fair in Berlin with a number of BullionStar executives, namely, Torgny Persson, CEO of BullionStar, Luke Chua, COO of BullionStar, and also Michael From, CEO of Liberty Silver in Sweden, a company founded by Mr Persson. The World Money Fair is the world’s leading numismatic and precious … Continue Reading

Venezuela Exports 36t Official Gold Reserves To Switzerland

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• Koos Jansen

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According to data released by the Swiss customs department on Tuesday, Venezuela has net exported 12 tonnes of gold to Switzerland in February 2016. In January Venezuela net exported 36 tonnes of gold to Switzerland, in total 48 tonnes was moved in the first two months of this year. On 16 March 2016 BullionStar researcher Ronan Manly reported … Continue Reading

SGE 2015 Trading Volume Up 84%

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• Koos Jansen

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In two parts I will present an overview of the Chinese gold market for calendar year 2015. In this part we’ll focus on Shanghai Gold Exchange trading volumes. In the next post we’ll focus on physical supply and demand flows in Chinese gold market in 2015. First, let us quickly assess the core volume data … Continue Reading

Venezuela Exported 12.5 Tonnes of Gold to Switzerland

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• Ronan Manly
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Following on from last month in which BullionStar’s Koos Jansen broke the news that Venezuela had sent almost 36 tonnes of its gold reserves to Switzerland at the beginning of the year, “Venezuela Exported 36t Of Its Official Gold Reserves To Switzerland In January“, there have now been further interesting developments in this ongoing saga. … Continue Reading

Kazakhstan & China Join Forces in Gold Market

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• Koos Jansen

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Silk Road Gold Trading Kicks Off The other day I bumped into a small but potentially important news item on the website of the Shanghai Gold Exchange. The article was published in Mandarin, of course, as the Chinese (authorities) hardly ever publish valuable information in English – most articles published in English have been intentionally … Continue Reading

SGE to Continue Publish Withdrawal Data!

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• Koos Jansen

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I’ve received written confirmation by the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) delivery department that the Chinese Market Data Monthly Reports disclose the volume of physical gold withdrawn from SGE designated vaults. I’m thrilled to resume reporting these numbers and everything related to the Chinese gold market! It’s advised to have read The Chinese Gold Market Essentials Guide before... Continue Reading

India's 2015 Gold Imports Strong Despite Gov't Obstruction

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• Koos Jansen

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While India’s gross gold bullion import in 2015 reached the third highest amount ever at 947 tonnes and gross silver bullion import reached the highest amount ever at 8,504 tonnes, the Indian government is perpetually trying to obstruct the populace from protecting their wealth. Last week I was going through gold and silver trade data released by the … Continue Reading

COMEX Gold Futures Can Be Settled With Eligible Inventory

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• Koos Jansen

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The 100-ounce Gold futures contract listed on the COMEX in New York can be traded in OTC market through which the contract can be “settled" with anything that resembles the underlying asset, for example gold recorded as eligible inventory in COMEX approved depositories. Make sure you’ve read GOFO And The Gold Wholesale Market before continuing. … Continue Reading

Dutch Central Bank Considers Relocating Gold Vault

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• Koos Jansen

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According to a press release the management team of the Dutch central bank has requested to investigate relocating the banknotes and gold vault that is currently located in the basement of bank’s headquarter at the Frederiksplein in Amsterdam. In the press release we can read the reason for the investigation to relocate the vault flows from preparations to … Continue Reading