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Gold Price - Where is it heading?

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A follow up article:


In the August 19, 2024 update, it was noted that Q2 2024 gold bar withdrawals from the London Over-The-Counter (OTC) market was the largest Q2 physical gold withdrawal from this market going back to 2000.

Since that update additional quarterly data going back to 2010 have been sourced with the kind assistance of Nick Laird of goldchartRus.com (thanks Nick!). This data shows several interesting facts about physical gold withdrawn from the London market - the world’s largest cash/spot gold market.

First, note that since January 2020 there have been 6 quarters where more than 200 tonnes of gold have been withdrawn from the London OTC market whereas this had only happened twice in the prior 10 year (see Figure 1 below).

Second, withdrawals of gold from the London OTC market of 391 tonnes in Q3 2020 and 463 tonnes in Q4 2020 were larger than the most recent available datum point of a 329 tonnes withdrawn in Q2 2024.

However, the 391 tonnes supplied to market in Q3 2023 appears to have been sufficient to help cap the London price of gold at $2,035 USD/oz. in August after which the following 463 tonnes supplied to market in Q4 2020 was followed by a price drop to $1,700 in March 2021 as shown by the red arrow in Figure 2 below.

Despite the lesser 329 tonnes of gold withdrawn from the London OTC market in Q2 2024, the gold price has continued to move higher in July and August of this year as shown by the green arrow in Figure 2 below.

The gold supplied to market has been insufficient to supply market demand forcing the London price higher since June.

​
Figure 1 - London OTC Market Gold Quarterly Gold Withdrawals 2010 through 2024; source: gold.org

​
Figure 2 - Weekly Cash/Spot Gold Price March 2020 to Present

Figure 3 shows that the gold market physical shortage stress can also be seen in the elevated market Implied Gold Lease Rates since 2022.

The implied gold lease rate below indicates the cost for market traders to borrow gold when required to deliver on their cash gold promissory note contracts that they have sold into the market.

​
Figure 3 - Implied Gold Lease Rate; souce: goldchartrus.com

This August 24, 2024 post showed that there is an estimated 9,500 tonnes to 14,300 tonnes of standing claims in the London cash (immediate ownership) OTC gold market.
Click to expand...
It is telling that the level of quarterly gold withdrawals that since 2022 have peaked at 329 tonnes per quarter in the London OTC gold market should stress this market for physical gold.

Where is the remainder of the gold to meet claims standing in the London market going to come from?

A withdrawal rate estimated at 3.5% or less of standing cash gold claims per quarter appears to be stressing the London OTC cash/spot physical gold market.
Click to expand...

Silver​

This August 24, 2024 post showed that there is an estimated 132,000 tonnes to 198,000 tonnes of standing claims in the London cash (immediate ownership) OTC silver market.
Click to expand...
The elevated implied silver lease rate shown below tells us a similar story to gold: the silver market is not adequately supplied to meet withdrawal levels at current prices:

​
Figure 4 - Implied Silver Lease Rate; souce: goldchartrus.com

In Closing​

The gold and silver markets are demanding higher gold and silver prices to meet current physical demand.

Physical withdrawal levels along with elevated physical market stress levels indicate that the gold and silver markets are going to become even more interesting.



jog on
duc
 
It would appear that all assets are now considered overpriced from bonds through stocks and on to commodities including precious metals.

As always when it happens it seems to have been inevitable. Selling assets such as Gold in the expectation of lower prices is not a simplistic answer. Where does one go with cash when faced with inflation? What assets will weather these times best.



I have noted in the past that London traders are quickest to sell down closely followed NY Comex on the 3 day chart above in the past. Where will markets go this week?

My own feelings are that there is no answer, nobody knows, stocks and bonds are bearish and Gold looks as if it may fall, perhaps as far as $USD2450 or further. Is this the start of of a crash? What will happen to the $USD:$AUD ? I wish I knew. I'm holding Gold still. The markets are crazy. I'm probably crazy not to go to cash.

Fear and greed.

gg
 

Doesn't everything go down in a crash? Some less than others perhaps.

I'm still 70% cash but I'm only keeping even due to inflation v interest.

I'm taking the DeLorean for a spin to 2050 to see where we're going.

Will let you know gg.
 
Sean K said:
Doesn't everything go down in a crash? Some less than others perhaps.

I'm still 70% cash but I'm only keeping even due to inflation v interest.

I'm taking the DeLorean for a spin to 2050 to see where we're going.

Will let you know gg.
Click to expand...
I think that 70% cash will serve you well in the next 12 or so months , Patience should pay , wait for the smell of blood and fear .
 
Further update:


The heart of the problem that is the London gold and silver Over-The-Counter (OTC) cash trading market is that it is based on trading of promissory notes for immediate ownership of metal with only a tiny fraction of that metal available for delivery.

This August 24, 2024 post showed that there is an estimated 9,500 tonnes to 14,300 tonnes of standing claims in the London cash (immediate ownership) OTC gold market.

And yet, London gold vaults hold a ‘float’ of only 1,300 tonnes of gold that are not held by ETFs or the Bank of England for itself and other nations.

The large majority of the London 1,300 tonne vault float is owned by holders that do not trade gold - only a small portion of the float is available to market for settlement of these spot gold promissory notes when delivery is demanded.
Click to expand...
Elevated implied market lease rates for gold since 2022 show that the physical gold lending market is stressed due to a now chronic shortage of physical metal.

Given that there may only be a few hundred tonnes (or less) of gold in London vaults available for settlement of claims vs the up to 14,300 tonnes of gold ownership claims indicated standing in the cash market, the Achilles Heel of the London market is physical delivery demand.

In Q1 and Q2 2024, there were 397 tonnes of London OTC market vault withdrawals of gold and UK import/export data show a net export (imports minus exports) of 40 tonnes of gold out of the UK through June:

​
Figure 1 - UK Gold Import / Export Data; source: goldchartsRus.com

Given the small apparent gold float, the London market is thus dependent on continued imports of gold should delivery demand for gold continue or increase.
Click to expand...
Meanwhile, the draw of physical gold globally is intense with accelerating delivery demand on the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) totaling 1,400 tonnes so far this year in a global 4,900 tonne annual gold market has led to high Shanghai gold premiums compared to London.

​
Figure 2 - Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) Gold Delivery Volumes 2008 to Present; source: goldchartsRus.com

In Closing​

The London promissory note market for gold and silver that has existed since 1987 appears to be teetering due to the strong global demand for physical gold and silver bars while such a large cohort of London cash/spot contract metal ‘owners’ exist.

To date, the Bank of England and bullion bank operators of this market have relied on the large majority of paper metal owners being satisfied that the spot contracts that they held meant that the contract owners actually owned metal.

Given the growing global shortage of gold and silver, it appears only to be a matter of time before a counter party to a London cash/spot gold promissory note defaults on delivery starting a rush of these paper note holders to demand delivery and dropping the kimono on the London market.

Given the enormous paper-to-metal gearing in London, the rush is likely to be very short.



jog on
duc
 
The analysis of the paper shortage above is spot on.
The problem is, I have been hearing this same story for over 30 years.
I want it to be true this time, but history seems to be against it.
There are just too many political and financial forces lined up against a free market for PM's, and they will do whatever it takes to keep their ponzi scheme alive.
Mick
 
We're working through this new box.

Would be really nice if it broke up.

Still no solid projections IMO, as just making all times highs, after all time highs, is guess work.

Unless you're into fib and gann and EW.

They only seem to work after the fact.


 

Neils Christensen article 05/09/24:​

Natixis sees gold prices holding around $2,500 this year and rising to $2,600 in 2025​


(Kitco News) - Asian investors, led by Chinese consumers, drove gold prices to record highs in the first half of the year. Now, one international bank expects Western investors to pick up the baton and push gold prices further into record territory.

Last week, Bernard Dahdah, a Precious Metals Analyst at Natixis, published an updated price forecast. He sees gold averaging around $2,600 an ounce in 2025. "After a strong start to the year, the Chinese market has now cooled off. One indicator that reflects this is the Shanghai gold premiums, which have been mainly trading at a discount for most of August," he said in his report. "Meanwhile, since the nearly 9% increase in prices since July, we have seen physically-backed gold ETFs (mainly held by Western investors) finally rise again after almost a full year of outflows."
Dahdah added that his bullish outlook comes as market drivers return to traditional fundamentals, supported by a weaker U.S. dollar and falling bond yields. However, he noted that there could be a limit to how much interest rates and yields will fall, at least through the rest of 2024.
Following disappointing employment data, with the number of job openings dropping in July, market expectations for a 50 basis point cut jumped sharply. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, markets now see a 45% chance of aggressive easing later this month.
However, Natixis foresees a slower downward path for interest rates.
"Our forecast differs from the consensus in that we believe the Fed will not view the economic situation as dire enough to warrant a rapid succession of cuts and will still be concerned with lingering, above-target inflation," he said. "While the jobs market is slowing, it is normalizing to a pace consistent with target inflation, not yet descending into outright weakness. This dynamic will allow the Fed to ease policy incrementally, with a 25bp cut in September and another in December for a total of 50bps in 2024."
Dahdah added that the French bank expects interest rates to fall to 3.25% in 2025, which will keep gold prices well-supported.
"Our view is that for the remainder of the year, prices will hover close to current levels as much of this year's rate cuts have already been factored in. That said, next year, we could see prices rising more rapidly, especially during the second half of the year," he said.
 
Quite an interesting opinion but it leaves out some important facts. The Central Banks of China has been buying more Gold this year than retail Chinese investors. Furthermore as @ducati alluded to in relation to the London market many Chinese retail investors are buying paper Gold rather than bar with the attendant risks to themselves and the market.

China retail is again drawing ahead of India but a concern is that with the Chinese economy not being in the best space at present and there may be a point where there is so much paper in relation to bar that if there is a severe recession or crash that the rush to physical Gold from paper will have the opposite effect causing a drop in the price with investors unable to get physical and selling paper gold under duress.

This is just my opinion. In relation to the Gold price what Natixis sees prices at is speculative, there are so many factors in our interconnected world that they may be correct or wildly out to the bullish or bearish side. Having said that @rcw1 one would have to be extremely brave to go short on Gold and I agree with you that it will go higher in to 2026 but much higher than Dahdah predicts.

gg
 
Good morning Garpal Gumnut
Hoping find you well and that the Ross Island Hotel is serving cold draft beer...
Truth be told bloke, rcw1 not sure where the PoG will end up in 2026, only onwards and upwards

Have a very nice day, today.

Kind regards
rcw1
 
People have been focussing on gold more than usual this year, which isn't surprising given it has been hitting multiple new highs. Lately many are going into overanalysis mode, talking about paper vs physical gold, retail vs government buying, and all sorts of focus on various trivial aspects of the situation.

I'm still just looking at the big picture, where we have high inflation, huge economic uncertainty, and decreasing strength and trust in the USD, while gold is always going to be gold. Gold sat pretty flat for over 10 years and only started taking off again this year. The last time gold sat flat for about ten years (it was flat from the early 80s to the mid 00's) it then quadrupled in the following 10 years or so. We're only starting to experience the pain caused by the insane Wuhan virus policies - you don't shut down huge economies and print ridiculous amounts of new money to prop things up without causing great harm, and tremendous efforts have been made to delay the signs of the impacts (to avoid accountability, but that's another story).

People can obsess over the small details as much as they like, but while they may cause little zigs and zags along the way, the big picture issues in my opinion all say gold is set to rise strongly over the next few years.
 

While inflation is part of the story, it is a lesser contributor than other factors:

We have always had inflation:



We have seen the 'paper v physical' gold market before:



Full: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Gold_Pool

We also have A Great Power fading and another Great Power rising:



Excerpted from “A Century of War”, by William Engdahl


Page 3: Acting on the urgings of a powerful group of London shipping & banking interests centered around the Bank of England…UK Parliament passed a Statement of Principle in support of the concept several decades earlier advocated by the Scottish economist, Adam Smith, so-called “absolute free trade.”


By 1846, this declaration of principle had become formalized in a parliamentary repeal of domestic English agriculture protection, the famous Corn Laws. The Corn Laws repeal was based on the calculation of powerful financial and trade interests of the City of London, that their world dominance gave them a decisive advantage, which they should push to the hilt. If they dominated world trade, “free trade” could only insure their dominance grew at the expense of other less developed trading nations.


The British Tory Party…pushed through the fateful Corn Law Repeal in May 1846, a turning point not only in British but in world history... Repeal opened the door for a flood of cheap products in agriculture, which created ruin among not only English but also other nations’ farmers. The merchants’ simple dictum “Buy cheap…sell dear,” was raised to the level of national economic strategy. Consumption was deemed the sole purpose of production.


Britain’s domestic agriculture & farmers were ruined by the loss of the Corn Laws protectionism. Irish farmers were immiserated, as their largest export market suddenly lowered food prices dramatically, as of Corn Law repeal. The mass starvation and outmigration of Irish peasants and their families in the late 1840s – the tragic Irish Potato Famine of 1845-46 and its aftermath – was a direct consequence of this “free trade” policy of Britain.


After 1846, Hindu peasants from Britain’s Indian colony competed, with their dirt-poor wage cost, against British and Irish farmers, for the market of the British “consumer.” Wage levels inside Britain began falling with the price of bread. The English Poor Laws granted compensation for workers earning below human subsistence wage, with income supplement payment pegged to the (falling) price of a loaf of bread.


In effect, repeal of Corn Laws protectionism opened the floodgates throughout the British Empire to a “cheap labor policy.” The only ones to benefit, following an initial surge of cheap food prices in England, were the international trading houses

and merchant banks which financed them. The class separations of British society were aggravated by a growing separation of a tiny number of very wealthy from the growing masses of very poor, as a lawful consequence of “free trade.”


The name given the political doctrine which rationalized the brutal economic policy was English Liberalism. In essence, English Liberalism, as it was defined towards the end of the 19th century, justified development of an ever more powerful imperial elite class, ruling on behalf of the “vulgar ignorant masses”, who could not be entrusted to rule on their own behalf.


Unlike the empires of France or other nations, Britain modelled its post-Waterloo empire on an extremely sophisticated marriage between top bankers and financiers in the City of London, Government cabinet ministers, heads of key industrial companies deemed strategic to the national interest, and the heads of espionage services….The covert marriage of private commercial power with government in the “free trade” era after 1846 was the secret of British hegemony.


However, as a direct consequence of this British free trade transformation, a deep economic depression began by the early 1870s in England following a financial panic. The Free Trade doctrine had been premised on the assumption that British influence could ensure that same dogma became economic policy in all the world’s major trading nations. That homogeneity was not to be won…


Following a severe London banking panic in 1857, the City of London banking establishment including the directors of the Bank of England resolved on a novel device intended to prevent future outflows of gold from London Banks. The Panic of 1857 resulted from a foreign run on the international gold reserves held by the Bank of England. The run collapsed bank credit in the City and across the country. In response to the crisis, the English authorities devised a policy which resulted in a simple if dangerous evolution of central bank practice.


The Bank of England, a private holding controlled not by the Government at the time but rather by the financial interests of the City, realized if it merely raised its central bank discount or interest rate to a sufficiently high level relative to rates in competing trading countries which at any time might be draining Britain’s gold reserves, then the drain would cease and eventually, if rates were driven sufficiently high, gold would again flow back into the banks of the City of London from Berlin, or New York or Paris or Moscow.


This interest rate policy was a powerful weapon in central banking which gave the Bank of England a decisive advantage over rivals. No matter that the usurious high interest rates created devastating depression in British manufacture or agriculture; the dominant faction in British economic policy increasingly after the 1846 Corn Laws repeal, was not industry or agriculture, but finance and international trade. In order to ensure the supremacy of British international banking, those bankers were willing to sacrifice domestic industry and investment.


But the consequences for British industry of this new Bank of England interest rate policy came home with a vengeance with the Great Depression which hit Britain in 1873 and lasted until 1896…


The lack of capital investment into British manufactures was evident already at the International Exhibition of 1867, where products from entirely new manufactures of machinery, even textiles from Germany and elsewhere, clearly overshadowed the stagnant technological levels of British manufacture, only two decades before the world leader. Export of British iron and steel, coal and other products declined in this period. The period of Britain’s easy leadership among the world’s industrial nations, by the 1890’s was clearly over…


After 1873’s economic downturn, British efforts to spread “free trade” became markedly less successful as nations of Continental Europe led by Germany initiated a series of economic protectionist measures which allowed them to unleash the most dramatic rates of industrial growth seen in the past 200 years.

Towards the final decade of the 19th century, British banking and political elites had begun to express the first signs of alarm over two specific aspects of the impressive industrial development of Germany. The first was emergence of an independent, modern German merchant and military naval fleet. Since 1815 and the Vienna Congress, the English Navy had been unchallenged lord of the seas.


The second strategic alarm was sounded over an ambitious German project to construct a railway linking Berlin with, ultimately, Baghdad, then part of the Ottoman Empire…


By the 1890s, British industry had been surpassed in both rates and quality of technological development by an astonishing emergence of industrial and agricultural development within Germany. With the US concentrated on its own internal expansion after its Civil War, the industrial emergence of Germany was seen increasingly as the largest “threat” to Britain’s global hegemony during the last decade of the century.


Until approximately the 1850’s, imitation of the apparently successful British economic model was the dominant policy followed in Germany, and the free trade economics of such British economists as Adam Smith or David Ricardo were regarded as holy gospel in German universities. But increasingly, after England went into prolonged depression in the 1870s, which hit Germany and Austria as well, Germany began to realize the serious flaws in continuing faithfully to follow the “British model.” As Germany turned increasingly to a form of national economic strategy, and away from British “free trade” adherence, in building a national industry and agriculture production, the results were remarkable.


As one indication of this shift away from the English model, from 1850 to the eve of the First World War in 1913, German total domestic output increased 5x. Per capita output increased in the same period by 250%. The population began to experience a steady increase in its living standard, as real industrial wages doubled between 1871 and 1913.


As late as 1870, British large industrial companies dwarfed their young German rivals. But that was to change dramatically over the next 3 to 4 decades. Steel was at the center of Germany’s growth, with rapidly emerging electrical power and chemicals industries close behind…German steel output increased 1,000% in the 20 years from 1880 to 1900, leaving British steel output far behind.


The rail infrastructure to transport this rapidly expanding flow of industrial goods, was the initial “locomotive” for Germany’s first “wirtschaftswunder”…state backed rail infrastructure fully doubled the kilometers of track from 1870 to 1913.


Thus, while England’s national industrial and finance policy (especially after 1873) fostered industrial retardation of technological progress, that of Germany fostered quite the opposite. By 1900 the trends of divergence between the two countries were evident to all.


But a growing friction between Germany and England in the years before 1914 was centered on two special aspects of Germany’s impressive overall economic development. First and foremost was the dramatic emergence of Germany as a pre-eminent modern shipping nation, ultimately threatening the decades-long English dominance of the seas.


So long as Germany did not control her own modern merchant fleet and have a navy to defend it, Germany could never determine her own economic affairs. England was still sovereign on the world’s oceans and intended so to remain. This was the heart of British geopolitical strategy. Under such conditions, argued an increasing majority in Germany, the nation’s economic life would be ever subject to the manipulations of a foreign shipping power for the essential terms of its vital international trade.


[The second aspect driving economic friction between England and Germany] was the construction of a modern railway linking Continental Europe with Baghdad….by 1896 a rail line was open which could go from Berlin to Konia deep in the Turkish interior of the Anatolian highlands, a stretch of some 1,000 km of new rail in a space of less than 8 years in an

economically desolate area. It was a true engineering and construction accomplishment. The ancient rich valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was coming into sight of modern transportation infrastructure.


…it would be a mistake to view the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway project as a unilateral German move against England. Germany repeatedly sought English co-operation in the project. Countless times since the 1890’s, when agreement with the Turkish government to complete a final 2,500 km stretch of rail which would complete the line to what is today Kuwait, Deutsche Bank and the Berlin government made attempts to secure English participation and co-financing of the enormous project.


The railway gave Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire vital modern economic linkage for the first time with its entire Asiatic interior. The rail link, once extended to Baghdad and a short distance further to Kuwait, would provide the cheapest and fastest link between Europe and the entire Indian subcontinent, a world rail link of the first order.


From the English side, this was exactly the point. “If ‘Berlin-Baghdad’ were achieved, a huge block of territory producing every kind of economic wealth, and unassailable by sea power would be united under German authority,” warned R.G.D Laffan, at that time a senior British military adviser attached to the Serbian Army.


It was becoming clear to some in England by about 1910 that dramatic remedies would be required to deal with the awesome German economic emergence...


Laffan hinted at the British strategy to sabotage the Berlin-Baghdad link. A glance at the map of the world will show how the chain of States stretched from Berlin to Baghdad. The German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, Turkey. One little strip of territory alone blocked the way and prevented the two ends of the chain from being linked together. That little strip was Serbia.


Serbia stood small but defiant between Germany and the great ports of Constantinople and Salonika, holding the Gate of the East. “Serbia was really the first line of defense of our eastern possessions. If she were crushed or enticed into the ‘Berlin-Baghdad’ system, then our vast but slightly-defended empire would soon have felt the shock of Germany’s eastward thrust.” (R.G.D. Laffan)


Thus it is not surprising to find enormous unrest and wars throughout the Balkans in the decade before 1914, including the Turkish War, the Bulgarian War and continuous unrest in the region. Conveniently enough, the conflict and wars helped weaken the Berlin-Constantinople alliance, and especially the completion of the Baghdad-Berlin rail link.


By most accounts, the trigger detonating the Great War was pulled by…a Serbian assassin on June 28, 1914, at the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, when he murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The next month, Austria (backed by Germany) declared war on the tiny state of Serbia [who was backed by Russia.]


Excerpts from “A Century of War – Anglo-American Oil Politics and The New World Order”, various pages between pages 3 and 43. F. William Engdahl, 2011

jog on
duc
 
Isn't it amazing how history repeats itself.
One fact i am getting more and more aware as i age is how sophisticated the markets were nearly 200y ago
QE, Madoff, ramping, startups same same whereas in my 20s 30s i imagined Wall Street ,markets and finance as new 20th century creations.
Thanks for that extract @ducati
 
Russia loading up on gold and foreign currency in September with US$1.9 billion allocated for that purpose, more than seven times the amount allocated in August. I'm betting that they will be purchasing a lot more gold than foreign currencies with that capital.


 
Some more gold history:

A high gold (and silver) price provides an essential warning signal of loose central bank monetary policy that, if it is continued, can ultimately result in high goods price inflation and suddenly higher interest rates.

Gold and silver have served as tools of discipline that ultimately limit loose central bank monetary policy.

There is mounting evidence that the collapse in gold prices from the 1980 high price of $850 /oz. to the 1999 low of $250 /oz. was orchestrated by market intervention both through 1) the Bank of England’s oversight of the conversion of London’s cash gold market to trading and holding promissory notes for gold in lieu of allocated physical bars and also 2) through gold sales and silent leasing of gold by central banks in the 1990s swamping the global physical gold market.

Central Bank Gold Leasing​

Ferdinand Lips was a Swiss banker and a founder and, until 1987, a Managing Director of Rothschild Bank AG in Zurich after which he started his own bank, Bank Lips AG, in Zurich.

In 2001, Lips published the must read book GOLD WARS - The Battle Against Sound Money as Seen From a Swiss Perspective - see here and here - that served as a warning of a catastrophic war against gold by the financial industry, that hated the limiting role of gold in stopping loose central bank financial policy that otherwise could create financial bubbles, and by central banks themselves.

As background, J.Aron & Co. LLC is a commodity trading firm that was purchased by Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. in 1981. Subsequent to this purchase by Goldman, employees of J.Aron ultimately became the senior management at Goldman including Lloyd Blankfein (CEO) and Gary Cohn (CEO, then later US Treasury Secretary).

In his book on pg. 123, Lips gave the following recollection of encountering employees of J. Araon & Co. advising central banks on their gold holdings:

What Lips finds and states in his book is that J.Aron employees were advising banks on selling and leasing gold with a view to suppressing the price of gold. Lips also mentions J.P.Morgan Bank, Chase Bank, Swiss bank UBS, and others as being involved in this gold leasing operation to silently oversupply the world’s markets.

Others Noticed, Too​

In October 1997, Richard Pomboy made a presentation at Grant’s Interest Rate Observer Fall Conference in New York that can still be found here. Pomboy estimated that 1,500 tonnes per year of central bank gold would need to be sold and leased into the gold market or risk a rising gold price. At that time, gold mines globally were producing roughly 2,500 tonnes per year.

In the late 1990’s, analysts James Turk, Reg Howe, and Frank Veneroso, each working independently and using different methods, published estimates that the central planners at our central banks were leasing up to 1,500 tonnes per year of the public’s gold reserves into the market using deceptive off-balance-sheet operations in order to manipulate down the price of gold. Veneroso estimated that Western central banks had leased-out up to 25% of their gold holdings in this manner.

What We Never Seem To Hear From J.Aron or Goldman Sachs​

What J.Aron, parent Goldman Sachs, other bullion banks and their alumni never discuss, that this writer has observed, is detailed analysis of this silent gold leasing scheme by central banks or the impact of London’s promissory note cash/spot gold system that trades a massive $382B daily in these immediate ownership cash gold notes creating a supply of virtual digital gold, that does not exist allocated in cash market vaults, to be held by investors.

It is estimated that today between 10,000 tonnes and 14,000 tonnes (320M to 450M oz.) of gold claims exist in the London immediate ownership cash market with very little metal backing.

Invariably over decades, it seems we have heard from these sources about retail coin demand, jewelry demand, the BRICS, or discussion of market generalities along with predictions of moderate gold and silver price rises or declines but never what goes directly to the reactor core - artificial supply of paper metal standing claims in London and central bank efforts to manipulate down the price working with bullion banks.

The end result is that central banks, coordinated by The Bank for International Settlements, have been running loose monetary policy for several decades that have inflated asset prices and speculation in assets to unheard of levels - until now.

​
Figure 1 - M2 Money Stock (red) vs S&P500 Stock Index 1980 to Present; source: TradingView.com

Physical Gold & Silver Demand Now Ends Their Price Setting​

It appears that the demand for physical gold and silver is now stressing the gold and silver markets with a silent run on these physical assets over the past two years to the point that price suppression and containment, that has worked so well for decades, is starting to fail and risks rapid-onset failure especially in London’s gold and silver markets.

When we see the coming catastrophe of the declining real value of currency, stocks, bonds, and real estate after decades of loose monetary policy speculation, what will J.Aron and Goldman Sachs say? And what will they say about gold and silver spiraling higher in price as gold and silver price manipulation and containment fails? War with Russia did it?



jog on
duc
 
Garpal Gumnut said:
It would appear that all assets are now considered overpriced from bonds through stocks and on to commodities including precious metals.
Click to expand...
Most commodities other than gold are still well down from their all time highs and based on various metrics do not appear historically expensive. Can you elaborate why you think commodities (other than gold) are overpriced?
 
Gold bull market intact:



Full: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/19/us-china-sign-agreement-to-cooperate-on-financial-stability.html


Recall that late last year and earlier this year, US Treasury officials met multiple times with Chinese officials, with the apparent goal of getting China to strengthen the CNY v. USD. China IS floating the CNY against gold, and that the CNY was down 30% v. gold from mid-2023 to January 1, 2024, and that the CNY is now down 55% v. gold since mid-2023





China likely told Treasury Secretary Yellen and her colleagues that “If you want the USD to fall v. CNY, then you need to let the USD price of gold rise, a lot”, because the USD is wildly overvalued v. gold – the long-term average of the market value of US official gold as a % of foreign-held USTs is 40%. Today, at $2,500, that ratio is just 8%.


Shortly after the Yellen Treasury began meeting with China about strengthening the CNY v. the USD and we speculated that the Chinese told Yellen to “let the USD price of gold rise”, the USD price of gold began rising (and we heard credible rumblings Treasury had begun bidding gold higher via proxies.) In recent weeks, around the US/China meeting above, gold broke out to new all-time highs.



CNY/USD



Weakening.



USD broadly.

Helping to contain rising UST yields:



Using gold as a modified monetary standard: https://www.ft.com/content/eda8f512-eaae-11df-b28d-00144feab49a#axzz3cgyPkN4y



The writing has been on the wall ever since the 'San Francisco Accord', which is when the Chinese sat down and thrashed out this plan that is now actuating.

The US at some point will revalue their gold supply (the 8000 tonnes at Ft Knox) if of course it still actually exists. Even if it doesn't, the revaluation can still happen, as all that is actually required is a policy statement revaluing the gold. No-one need actually see the physical gold.

As calculated a number of times, each $4000/gold = $1T.

How that calculation affects the value of the USD/CNY will play out in the markets. But it will be a weaker USD/CNY.

The idea of course is as old as the hills: US manufactures/services as against Chinese manufactures, become more competitive, reducing trade deficits.

China is unconcerned as Chinese trade with the rest of the world (see previous charts) is at all time highs and growing. Largely due to the Belt & Road strategy implemented decades ago.

Takeaway:

Gold (physical) is going much higher.

Miners: not a fan.

The risks are that with gold being de facto returning to the reserve asset of the world and concurrent significant price increase, that gold once again becomes front and centre a national security issue.

Gold mines increase their risk of being nationalised or controlled.


jog on
duc
 
Good afternoon gold believers

RBC Capital Markets told clients on Monday it expects records to keep falling, lifting its 2025 average gold price forecast to $US2835 an ounce (cited AFR Alex Gluyas electronic article 09/09/24).

Kind regards
rcw1
 
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