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BullionStar Blogs

BullionStar is renowned for presenting original research and expertise
covering the most important trends in the precious metals markets.

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

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

  • date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 12 Comments

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 arrow

Chinese Gold Demand 973t In H1 2016

Chinese Gold Demand 973t In H1 2016

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

Bullion Coin Sales Boost Mints' Revenues

Bullion Coin Sales Boost Mints' Revenues

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

Gold & Brexit

Gold & Brexit

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 1 Comments

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 arrow

Saving in Gold vs. Investing in Gold

Saving in Gold vs. Investing in Gold

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 3 Comments

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 arrow

Paper Currencies Are Worthless

Paper Currencies Are Worthless

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 4 Comments

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 arrow

Central Bank, Governments and Their Gold Coin Holdings

Central Bank, Governments and Their Gold Coin Holdings

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 1 Comments

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 arrow

An Update On LBMA Refinery Statistics & GFMS
Offshore Bullion Storage or 3 Eggs?

Offshore Bullion Storage or 3 Eggs?

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

Spotlight on LPMCL: London Precious Metals Clearing Limited
LPPM: The London Platinum & Palladium Market

LPPM: The London Platinum & Palladium Market

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 1 Comments

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 arrow

Infographic: COMEX Gold Futures Market

Infographic: COMEX Gold Futures Market

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 5 Comments

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 arrow

Lars Schall Interview With Ronan Manly, April 2016
Infographic: The London Gold Market

Infographic: The London Gold Market

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 3 Comments

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 arrow

Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price: New Kid on the Block

Shanghai Gold Benchmark Price: New Kid on the Block

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 4 Comments

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 arrow

Profiles of Key Gold Vaults Around the World

Profiles of Key Gold Vaults Around the World

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 1 Comments

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 arrow

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

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

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 2 Comments

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 arrow

新加坡贵金属市场行情 - 投资储藏黄金白银新的好地方
Silver Bullion in Singapore

Silver Bullion in Singapore

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

Deutsche Bank to Settle With London Silver Fixing Plaintiffs

Deutsche Bank to Settle With London Silver Fixing Plaintiffs

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 1 Comments

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 arrow

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

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

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

SGX Kilobar Gold Contract vs. Trading with BullionStar
BullionStar’s Visit to the World Money Fair in Berlin

BullionStar’s Visit to the World Money Fair in Berlin

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

Venezuela Exports 36t Official Gold Reserves To Switzerland

Venezuela Exports 36t Official Gold Reserves To Switzerland

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

SGE 2015 Trading Volume Up 84%

SGE 2015 Trading Volume Up 84%

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

Venezuela Exported 12.5 Tonnes of Gold to Switzerland
Kazakhstan & China Join Forces in Gold Market

Kazakhstan & China Join Forces in Gold Market

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

SGE to Continue Publish Withdrawal Data!
India's 2015 Gold Imports Strong Despite Gov't Obstruction
COMEX Gold Futures Can Be Settled With Eligible Inventory

COMEX Gold Futures Can Be Settled With Eligible Inventory

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

Dutch Central Bank Considers Relocating Gold Vault
GOFO and the Gold Wholesale Market

GOFO and the Gold Wholesale Market

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

Venezuela Exports 36t Official Gold Reserves To Switzerland
Crude Oil & U.S. Dollar & Gold

Crude Oil & U.S. Dollar & Gold

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 6 Comments

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 arrow

London Bled 184t of Gold In December

London Bled 184t of Gold In December

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

The LBMA Silver Price: Broken Promises

The LBMA Silver Price: Broken Promises

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 10 Comments

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 arrow

Gold Market Trends 2016

Gold Market Trends 2016

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 4 Comments

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 arrow

SGE Continues To Publish Withdrawals Figures?

SGE Continues To Publish Withdrawals Figures?

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

BullionStar Financials 2015 – The Year in Review

BullionStar Financials 2015 – The Year in Review

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

The Gold Vaults of London: Malca-Amit

The Gold Vaults of London: Malca-Amit

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 1 Comments

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 arrow

Koos Jansen's Presentation at Scotiabank

Koos Jansen's Presentation at Scotiabank

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

2015 Update on Bundesbank Gold Repatriation
China Stops Publishing SGE Withdrawal Figures

China Stops Publishing SGE Withdrawal Figures

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

Amazing Gold Videos

Amazing Gold Videos

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  • author BullionStar
  • comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

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

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

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  • author Ronan Manly
  • comments 1 Comments

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 arrow

In China Everyone Can Buy Gold At The SGE

In China Everyone Can Buy Gold At The SGE

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

Are SGE Withdrawals Gone?

Are SGE Withdrawals Gone?

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

2016 Chinese Gold and Silver Pandas
An Examination of Australia-China Cross-Border Gold Trade
A Guide to the Chinese Gold Market

A Guide to the Chinese Gold Market

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  • author Koos Jansen

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 arrow

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