Spot #gold is trading aroundv$1827/oz with a $0.30/oz bid-ask spread on Friday morning in London.
Although it bounced after stronger US inflation data, it couldn't hold those gains as yields firmed late in the day.
But lets look at a slightly longer term perspective...
Since the start of the year, #gold is essentially flat...
...yet 10-year treasury yields are about 65bp higher (less negative)
There have been a lot of questions about why gold is not weaker this year - the Fed is obviously going to hike A LOT and starting in March. The move in real yields would normally have pointed to lower #gold prices yet hasn't.
Treu, inflows into ETF have been supportive this year, but have been relative small at 'only' 55t or $3.26bn.
Managed Money held via Comex #gold futures hasn't helped, however, with net longs 112t lower between 28/12 and 1/2/21.
Some (and you know who you are @EdVanDerWalt) have suggested that large central bank buying has been taking place, but there is no evidence of that and I haven't heard any talk of unusual flows.
Rather it may be because of less exciting supply and demand fundamentals.
From the executive summary of our recently-publised Gold Demand Trends...
There's also another factor that doesn't get as much attention as it should - (small investment) Bar and Coin demand, which was again very strong in Q4-21 and for 2021 as a whole.
And finally #gold supply fell in 2021, with technical issues leading to Mine Production disappointment, especially in the second half of the year.
Recycling fell 11% y/y in 2021 too.
For more information on underlying supply and demand in the gold market, which goes some way to explain this year's reslience in #gold, see our recent #GoldDemandTrends publication.
Spot #gold hit another all-time high of about $2,573/oz this morning in European trading following yesterday's move to another record high following the ECB rate cut and US PPI.
Spot #gold is around $2,567/oz just after noon in the UK.
US dollar weakness has helped #gold move higher, but gold in euros is also at an all-time-high, so gold is outperforming a weak USD.
Looking at open interest changes on the Comex #gold futures market, it seems very likely that short term speculators have been responsible for the move higher in gold over the past two days.
This chart shows the international gold price denominated in CNY compared to the domestic price of the 9999 contract on the Shanghai gold exchange.
This divergence is unusual.
Gold trading on the Shanghai #Gold Exchange has moved to a large premium to the international gold price. We've seen premiums before, but the current percentage premium is unprecedented.
Trading volumes of the SGE 9999 #gold contract are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance there is nothing to see here...
Putting this another way, if all the sales from the CBT have been to fulfill demand for gold domestically, then retail investment demand for #gold has exploded in Turkey.
Here is quarterly #gold bar and coin demand from our #GDT data series.
Q1-2023 saw strong demand of about 50t...
The implication is that in April alone 80t of #gold was bought in Turkey.
Turkish investors have turned to #gold to protect then from high inflation and the prospect of currency depreciation.
I'll tweet out some of the highlights from the report for those too lazy to download it.
Above: total stock of #gold above ground is about 209,000t.
Below, the value of this stock.
Note that there are substantial quantities of OTC #gold derivative positions that are not included in this total as this information is not readily or reliably available.
We've (obviously) noticed the divergence between #gold and the TIPS yield as its been going on for a while.
I beleive that this relationship, which has worked very well since the run-up to the GFC may have fundamentally changed...