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.
It's hard to be sure but the dollar did open a little firmer than Friday's close.
Could the sell-off have been a 'fat finger' or something malicious? Either are possible.
But its also possible that #gold slipped lower as the dollar firmed, triggering stop-loss selling, which caused gold to slip lower, triggering more stops until the selling was exhaused.
Gold hit a new all-time high this morning, posting $1944.71/oz during late Asian trading and is currently near that level.
There has been a LOT of coverage of the all-time-high on social media – who knew there were so many #gold experts?😃😃
It’s great timing as far as we are concerned, as it means that #gold is getting a lot of attention ahead of the launch of our Q2-2020 / H1-2020 #GoldDemandTrends release, which will come out on Thursday.
What can we say about #gold at the moment? Obviously I am not going to front run the release of GDT, but we can repeat themes we’ve been making for some time.
Gold is trading just above $1800/oz after hitting a fresh 8-year high this week. Not much appears to stand in the way of #gold challenging the all-time high of $1921/oz set in September 2011.
The best financial market-related explainer of the move in #gold is ever-falling real US yields and this relationship remains extremely important.
As concerns about the impact of the Coronvirus intensify, real rates have headed every lower, helping gold.
(Although interestingly the correlation of real rates and #gold has weakened sharply over the past month as this chart shows)
What a ride it has been for GCM0, the June-expiry Comex #gold contract.
One month ago it was trading at a $15/oz premium to the spot gold price.
Now it's trading at a $10/oz discount.
(short thread)
I’ve had a few questions this morning about
“why is the Comex future trading at a discount to spot”
The short answer is that we are nearing first notice for Jun, so specs and investors are selling Jun and buying August.
This is pushing the Jun lower, hence the discount.
This screenshot of the contract table shows that much of the aggregate open interest has been rolled into August, but there is still nearly 100k lots left (as of 26 May).
Russia’s central bank announced yesterday that it will suspend domestic #gold purchases on 1 April, with further decisions on gold to be made depending on market circumstances.
The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (CBR) had been a consistent gold buyer since 2006, reaching 2,279 tonnes of gold holdings as of March 2020 which accounted for 20.6% of total reserves. CBR’s announcement followed several signals that it was scaling back its gold buying.
The pace of buying had slowed from 274 tonnes in 2018 to 158 tonnes in 2019, and a discount to price at which CBR buys domestic gold was implemented in May 2019 to encourage producers to find other buyers.
Comex #gold premium to OTC gold has climbed sharply as this chart from Bloomberg shows.
On 23/03 at 6am the EFP stood at about $6/oz. A day later, this has blown out ot more than $20/oz.
Due to shortages of investment gold and difficulties in shipping metal around.
News that three large #gold Swiss refineries are halted for at least a week as this story from @peterhobson15 illustrates has played a role in this move.