BullionStar Blogs

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
• 4 Comments

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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

GOFO and the Gold Wholesale Market

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• Koos Jansen

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An essay on the relationship between GOFO, gold forwards, the gold lease rate and the US dollar interest rate. In order to continue to reveal essential information about the physical and paper gold markets around the world, first I would like to expand on the inner workings of the gold wholesale market. In this post we’ll use … Continue Reading

Venezuela Exports 36t Official Gold Reserves To Switzerland

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• Koos Jansen

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Switzerland has net imported 35.8 tonnes of gold from Venezuela in January 2016. This unusual high tonnage must be gold from the central bank of Venezuela – Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) – that has been swapping metal with banks or simply sold it in the open market. Remarkably, after Venezuela repatriated 160 tonnes in official gold reserves … Continue Reading

Crude Oil & U.S. Dollar & Gold

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• BullionStar
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In the midst of upwards trending oil prices a decade ago, a US senate committee recommended actions to curb the high oil price to mitigate the negative effect on growth. Ok, great, the oil price went from north of USD 140 in 2008 to around USD 30 now. But now, mainstream economists are disappointed that … Continue Reading

London Bled 184t of Gold In December

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• Koos Jansen

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When there is no more gold left in London to export the gold price is likely to go higher on strong global demand induced by economic headwind. At the time of writing the spot gold price is $1,251.80 per ounce, up 18 % year to date, while the S&P 500 is down 9 % year to date. In … Continue Reading

The LBMA Silver Price: Broken Promises

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• Ronan Manly
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On 28 January 2016, the midday LBMA Silver Price auction took 29 rounds to establish a final price of US$13.58 which was manipulated down by a whopping 6% below where silver spot and futures prices were trading at that time. This auction fiasco and price manipulation has caused deep concern among silver benchmark price users … Continue Reading

Gold Market Trends 2016

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• BullionStar
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Let’s look into the crystal ball to see what 2016 – The Year of the Monkey – has in store for us when it comes to the gold market. Gold Price What will the price of gold be at the end of 2016? Will it dip under USD 1,000/oz? To answer that question, we first … Continue Reading

SGE Continues To Publish Withdrawals Figures?

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• Koos Jansen

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It seems the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) is continuing to publish the amount of gold withdrawn from the vaults on a monthly basis. For the month of January “SGE withdrawals” accounted for 225 tonnes, down 1 % from December. After the first weekly SGE reports in 2016 did not disclose SGE withdrawal data and phone … Continue Reading

BullionStar Financials 2015 – The Year in Review

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• BullionStar
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2015 was a momentous year for BullionStar with sales revenues totaling SGD 89.6m*, a 69.1% increase from 2014. 2015 also marked the first full calendar year in operation for our unique bullion retail shop, showroom and built-in vault which was launched in July 2014. In 2015, we increased our product range to include over 370 … Continue Reading

The Gold Vaults of London: Malca-Amit

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• Ronan Manly
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Following on from the recent blog post “G4S London Gold Vault 2.0 – ICBC Standard Bank in, Deutsche Bank out“, which discusses the G4S precious metals vault located on Abbey Road in the Park Royal area of London, its instructive to also look at where the other London Gold Market vaults are located. According to … Continue Reading

Koos Jansen's Presentation at Scotiabank

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• Koos Jansen

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I was invited by Scotiabank to speak about Chinese gold demand at their commodities outlook conference on 12 January 2016 in Toronto. Of course I was thrilled to come over and share what I’ve been studying for the past years – thanks again Scotiabank for inviting me! In my 20-minute presentation I could clearly explain … Continue Reading

2015 Update on Bundesbank Gold Repatriation

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• Ronan Manly
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Deutsche Bundesbank has just released a progress report on its gold bar repatriation programme for 2015 – “Frankfurt becomes Bundesbank’s largest gold storage location“. During the calendar year to December 2015, the Bundesbank claims to have transported 210 tonnes of gold back to Frankfurt, moving circa 110 tonnes from Paris to Frankfurt, and just under … Continue Reading

China Stops Publishing SGE Withdrawal Figures

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• Koos Jansen

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UPDATE 11 MARCH 2016: THE SGE HAS CONFIRMED TO CONTINUE PUBLISHING SGE WITHDRAWALS! My research into the Chinese gold market started in 2013 when I noted the significance of a number published on a weekly basis in the Chinese Market Data Weekly Reports on the website of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) regarding the amount … Continue Reading

Amazing Gold Videos

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• BullionStar
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Uncertainty in the Chinese economy and sliding stock markets has dominated the financial news as of late. While the stock markets are sliding, gold and silver prices are up a few percent since the start of the year. So in the midst of all this, we thought it would good to remind ourselves of the … Continue Reading

G4S London Gold Vault 2.0: ICBC In, Deutsche Bank Out

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• Ronan Manly
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On 8 January 2016, Reuters broke the news that ICBC Standard Bank has purchased the lease on Deutsche Bank’s gold vault in London, and that ICBC Standard intends to become a member of the clearing syndicate, London Precious Metals Clearing Limited (LPMCL): “ICBC Standard Bank is buying the lease on Deutsche Bank’s London gold and … Continue Reading

In China Everyone Can Buy Gold At The SGE

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• Koos Jansen

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The Shanghai Gold Exchange launched a smartphone app for customers to trade gold. It’s advised to have read The Chinese Gold Market Essentials Guide before you continue. The main reason there is such a large discrepancy between Chinese gold demand as disclosed by the World Gold Council (WGC) and the amount of gold withdrawn from the vaults … Continue Reading

Are SGE Withdrawals Gone?

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• Koos Jansen

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Did the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) just ceased publishing the weekly amount of gold withdrawn from the vaults? If so, the SGE has chosen to add another layer of secrecy over the Chinese gold market. As, SGE withdrawals provide a unique metric for Chinese wholesale gold demand. This started on 11 January 2016 when the SGE released the “Announcement on … Continue Reading

2016 Chinese Gold and Silver Pandas

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• BullionStar
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The much awaited Chinese Gold and Silver Pandas for 2016 have now been released! Last year, the manufacturer, China Gold Corporation, surprised collectors with their decision to remove the weight and purity inscription on the reverse side of the coin. For this year’s edition, China Gold Corporation once again surprised by revising the weight distribution of the coins. … Continue Reading

An Examination of Australia-China Cross-Border Gold Trade

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• Koos Jansen

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As China doesn’t publicly disclose how much gold it imports, we have to combine the foreign trade statistics from all large gold exporting nations to figure out how much is flowing to China. The second largest gold producer in the world is Australia with an annual production of 270 tonnes, according the US Geological Survey. The majority of Australia’s mine … Continue Reading

A Guide to the Chinese Gold Market

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• Koos Jansen

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Everything there is to know about the Chinese gold market and the true size of Chinese private and official gold demand. Start here. This post was updated in late 2017. This post will guide you through all relevant articles that have been published on BullionStar Blogs over the years that elucidate the mechanics of the Chinese (domestic) … Continue Reading

Koos Jansen Interviews Lars Schall

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• Koos Jansen

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I was interviewed by Lars Schall on behalf of Matterhorn Asset Management, 4 November 2015. Please listen to the podcast below, or you can read the transcript provided with links for further reference. Wa talked about PBOC gold purchases, the London Bullion Market, The Shanghai Gold Exchange, the Silk Road Economic Project and much more! Continue Reading