BullionStar Blogs

The Role of Gold as Turmoil Hits Financial Markets

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• BullionStar
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With continued selloffs this week led by US stock markets, and now moving into Asian markets, the complacency that had set in in financial markets has come to an abrupt halt as volatility reappears. Aside from the equity bourses, the emerging cryptocurrency markets have also suffered a multi-week selloff which has left investors unclear as to what lies ahead.

In such market... Continue Reading

Should We Restore the Gold Standard?

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• JP Koning
• 18 Comments

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Would it make sense to rebuild an international gold standard like the one we had in the late 1800s? Over the years I've been following two economists who have debated this very topic on multiple occasions. Larry White says the idea has merit, David Glasner believes it isn't worth the risk. Let's look at one or two of the most important themes running through the White v Glasner debate. Continue Reading

What’s Happening (or Not) at the LBMA: Some Updates

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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Recently, the London bullion market has seen some change in the form of monthly reporting of the quantities of gold and silver held in the LBMA vaults in London. These vault figures are reported by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).

The LBMA is also involved in advancing a trade reporting project which will for the first time publish trade data about the London... Continue Reading

Your Weight in Gold

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• BullionStar
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There are many phrases and sayings in the English language that illustrate the high-regard with which societies hold for gold. These phrases are embedded into natural language and have evolved over time based on an intrinsic appreciation by civilizations that gold is rare and of high value.

One example is the saying “worth your weight in gold”. Although a metaphor, what... Continue Reading

Bitcoin Backwardation, Gold Contango

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• JP Koning
• 7 Comments

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Since bitcoin futures began to trade on the CBOE in December 2017, they have often traded below bitcoin's current price, a pattern called inversion or backwardation. Gold, which is a similar asset in many respects, almost never inverts. It is always in contango. This article explains why this pattern has prevailed and hypothesizes that it is likely to continue in the future thanks to... Continue Reading

Russia & China Are Very Interested in U.S. Gold Reserves

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• Ronan Manly
• 22 Comments

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Recently, Russian television network RT published a number of articles on its website discussing US official gold reserves.

These articles were based on extensive answers and opinions given to RT by BullionStar precious metals analyst Ronan Manly, and covered topics such as the location and quality of the US gold reserves, and how the accumulation of Russian and Chinese gold... Continue Reading

Why Does Money Inflate?

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• JP Koning
• 1 Comments

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People who live in developed nations have grown used to inflation of around 2% a year over the last few decades. Why do prices generally rise by that amount? What drives the purchasing power of money in these countries? This post explores the last thousand years of monetary history--and three different sorts of monetary systems--to help understand the causes of inflation. Continue Reading

December 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The latest edition of BullionStar’s Gold Market Charts articles has now been published and covers developments in the world’s main physical gold markets during November, the latest period for which the relevant data is available.

Gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) during November continued to be strong, with 2017 shaping up to be either the 3rd or 4th... Continue Reading

The 5 Largest Gold Nuggets That Still Exist

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• BullionStar
• 5 Comments

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The discovery of large gold nuggets has always caused excitement for gold miners and the general public alike. Although most of the big gold nuggets discovered receive nicknames and these names pass into legend, many of history’s big gold nuggets have been melted down and no longer survive.

The world’s largest surviving gold nuggets are now held and displayed in places as... Continue Reading

Gold For Christmas – Gold’s Importance in Religion

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• BullionStar
• 1 Comments

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From religious artwork to religious symbolism, gold and religion have always been symbolically linked in nearly all of the world’s major religions. Due to its unique glow and yellow shine, gold is symbolic of the sun and the energy of the divine.

Since it is relatively rare, indestructible and doesn't decay and corrode, the use of gold in religion also conveys a preciousness... Continue Reading

The Most Outlandish Gold Products You Can Buy

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• BullionStar
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Since gold is a rare and valuable substance, it has always been associated with opulence and wealth. None more so than when gold is combined with a product to give that product an air of luxury and exclusivity.

Sometimes the match between gold and a product works well, yielding a classic luxury good boosted by its gold content. Other times the outcome may not be so... Continue Reading

Demand in the Singapore Gold Bullion Market

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• BullionStar
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Singapore’s gold market is now one of the largest in the region after strong growth, particularly over the last 5 years since the Singaporean government exempted investment precious metals from Goods and Services Tax GST in October 2012.

The gold market in Singapore is both a wholesale market and a retail market. The wholesale market includes bullion banks, trading houses and... Continue Reading

Mustafa Centre: Gold in Singapore

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• BullionStar
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The Mustafa Centre in Singapore's Little India is well-known as a slightly eccentric and congested shopping mall and arcade in which to buy all manner of diverse items. It also sells a lot of gold jewelry and a small selection of gold bullion.

But after navigating through the busy streets and actually finding the Mustafa Centre, the next challenge involves locating the Centre's... Continue Reading

Bitcoin Isn’t Digital Gold; It’s Digital Uselesstainium

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• JP Koning
• 34 Comments

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Bitcoin is supposed to be a digital version of gold, but a better analogy would be to uselesstainium, a useless and boring grey metal. The only reason for buying uselesstainium is to sell it on to the next buyer at a better price. This means that the price of uselesstainium--whether it be the physical or digital version--will always be incredibly volatile, a price of zero being as... Continue Reading

November 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The latest edition of BullionStar’s monthly wrap-up of developments in the world’s largest physical gold markets has just been published.

Chinese wholesale gold market demand for 2017 is shaping up to be the third strongest year on record, with projected gold demand for the full year running somewhere in the region of just under 2000 tonnes.

The central bank of... Continue Reading

Russia, China, and BRICS: A New Gold Trading Network

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• Ronan Manly
• 6 Comments

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As the Russian central bank continues to aggressively accumulate its official gold reserves, and Russia and China spearhead a plan to create a cross-border gold trading system between the BRICS nations, it seems clear that there are significant changes on the horizon for the global gold market.

Given that the 5 BRICS members of China, India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa are... Continue Reading

Eat Gold

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• BullionStar
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A common phrase in the mainstream financial media is that ‘you can’t eat gold”. This claim is usually trotted out by CNBC and Bloomberg talking-heads as a way of disparaging the benefits of investing gold in times of crisis. But the claim is both wrong and misleading, because you actually can eat gold. And drink it too.

Furthermore, Wall Street and its cheerleaders are... Continue Reading

Buy Silver Bullion in Singapore

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• BullionStar
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Singapore offers a number of benefits when buying and storing silver. In Singapore, the majority of silver bullion bars and silver bullion coins from the world’s major mints and refineries are exempt from Goods and Services Tax (GST). There are also no taxes or duties on the import or export of silver. Singapore is also … Continue Reading

Your Weight in Gold

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• BullionStar
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If you buy and take delivery of gold bars or gold coins and want to keep your gold close at hand in your own home, you will still need to ensure that it is safely stored on your property, preferably in a hidden location that only you and close family members are aware of. There are many hiding places in a house or on a property to store gold, some more sensible than others.... Continue Reading

28 Reasons to Buy Physical Gold

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• BullionStar
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There are many compelling reasons to own physical gold in the form of investment grade gold bars and gold coins. Among them are gold’s ability to retain its purchasing power over time, and it’s safe haven status in times of financial turmoil and uncertainty.

Gold has been known throughout history as the pre-eminent form of money and its track record as a stable money is... Continue Reading

Zimbabwe's Hyperinflation is Back

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• JP Koning
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Despite having dollarized back in 2008, Zimbabwe has once again entered hyperinflation territory. With it, the infamous dictator and the world's oldest leader at 93, Robert Mugabe, is finally losing grip of power. In this blog post, you can read about Zimbabwe's recent monetary experiment again hideously trying to issue a new version of the Zimbabwe dollar. Continue Reading

China Gold Import Jan-Sep 797t. Who’s Supplying?

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• Koos Jansen

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While the gold price is slowly crawling upward in the shadow of the current cryptocurrency boom, China continues to import huge tonnages of yellow metal. As usual, Chinese investors bought on the price dips in the past quarters, steadfastly accumulating for a rainy day. The Chinese appear to be price sensitive regarding gold, as was mentioned in the most recent World Gold Council Demand... Continue Reading

LME Gold & Silver Reference Prices: Will Anyone Notice?

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• Ronan Manly
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As the London Metal Exchange (LME) rolls out the publication of daily reference prices for gold and silver in London, the question must be asked, are they needed? The incumbent and dominant reference prices in the London precious metals market are the LBMA Gold Price and LBMA Silver Price. These LBMA prices are used to value everything from ETFs to OTC contracts, and, for better or... Continue Reading

October 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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BullionStar’s monthly gold charts series reviews developments in the world’s large physical gold markets including China, Russian and Switzerland.

Latest gold withdrawal data from the Shanghai Gold Exchange suggests that for the full year of 2017, Chinese wholesale gold demand will exceed 2000 tonnes. In September, the Russian central bank added a further 34 tonnes to its... Continue Reading

Degussa Singapore Closes Retail Store

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• BullionStar
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Exactly 2 years after opening a retail bullion shop in Singapore and expanding outside Europe, Degussa GoldHandel has announced that it is closing its Singapore shop on 31 October. Of possible relevance to the decision, the Degussa Singapore operation has been loss making since inception, with full year results to 31 December 2016 showing a new loss of SGD 2.8 million.

Although... Continue Reading

Neck and Neck: Russian & Chinese Official Gold Reserves

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• Ronan Manly
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For the last 10 years, the Bank of Russia has been aggressively adding to its official gold reserves, especially since 2014. Russian official gold reserves now stand at 1779 tonnes, the world’s 6th largest sovereign gold stockpile. Meanwhile, China, the world’s 5th largest sovereign gold holder with 1842 tonnes, has mysterious not ‘officially’ added any gold to its reserves... Continue Reading

The Gold-Backed-Oil-Yuan Futures Contract Myth

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• Koos Jansen

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On September 1, 2017, the Nikkei Asian Review published an article titled, “China sees new world order with oil benchmark backed by gold”, written by Damon Evans. Just below the headline in the introduction it states, “China is expected shortly to launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold in what analysts say could be a game-changer for the... Continue Reading

BullionStar Rebuilds Community Center in Indonesia

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• BullionStar
• 7 Comments

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Across the border of Singapore, a ferry-ride away, a fire broke out on Saturday, 8 July 2017 in a slum in Muka Kuning, Batam, Indonesia. The fire destroyed 10 huts tragically affecting the lives of the families living there who already struggle daily to make ends meet. We decided to take a small step towards making a difference in this community and funded the restoration of the... Continue Reading

Essentials of China's Gold Market

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• BullionStar
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A series of 8 articles about the Chinese Gold Market have now been added to Gold University section of BullionStar’s website. These articles are collected titled “Chinese Gold Market Essentials”. The articles are mostly structured around the supply – demand equation of the Chinese gold market which has the Shanghai Gold Exchange at its core, as the market’s allocation... Continue Reading

September 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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This month’s Gold Market Chart commentary as always, looks at trends and developments in the world’s largest physical gold markets including the Swiss and London gold markets, Chinese gold demand and the growth in Russian official gold reserves.

In China, cumulative gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange for the year to end of August suggest that Chinese... Continue Reading

LBMA Silver Benchmark – Changes, But No Wider Participation

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• Ronan Manly
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On 2 October, ICE Benchmark Administration will take over the running of the daily LBMA Silver Price auction. This follows the mysterious decision in March of this year when CME and Thomson Reuters announced that they would be stepping down from administering and calculating this widely used silver price benchmark.

While the tender process of appointing a silver auction... Continue Reading

New Release Now Available: 2018 Australian Lunar Series

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• BullionStar
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Australian Lunar Series 2018 now available for ordering! Continue Reading

Torgny Persson: Will Gold Hit $65,000 in 5 Years?

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• BullionStar
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Is it realistic that the price of gold could reach USD 65,000/oz in 5 years? In this speech, BullionStar's CEO, Mr Torgny Persson, shares his views on the gold price as well discusses the following topics:

1) Money System of Today - How does our monetary system work? Or doesn't work? Do fiat currencies like the US Dollar have any real intrinsic value?

2) Gold... Continue Reading

Winners of BullionStar's Silver Britannia Competition

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• BullionStar
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In the month of August 2017, we launched a competition in collaboration with The Royal Mint. The competition invited customers of The Royal Mint and BullionStar to promote the Royal Mint Brand in Singapore through any medium! We received numerous top quality submissions and after much deliberation, we present to you the two winners of the competition, Ms. … Continue Reading

BullionStar Media & Original Content

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• BullionStar
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BullionStar's website features a wide variety of original analysis and content on precious metals markets globally and which provides readers and viewers with unique and up-to-date insights that are not available elsewhere.

A case in point is the BullionStar Perspectives video series which gives viewers free access to leading independent analysis of precious metals markets. In... Continue Reading

BullionStar Financials FY 2017 – Year in Review

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• BullionStar
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BullionStar is transparently releasing sales data and information about the company's overall financial performance for each financial year. This blog post presents the financials as they stood at the end of the financial year 2017. BullionStar increased its sales revenue to SGD 186,200,000 for FY 2017, up 38.7% from SGD 134,200,000 for FY 2016. BullionStar handled 15,213 buy orders... Continue Reading

August 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The August edition of BullionStar’s monthly gold chart analysis has now been published to the BullionStar website.

Gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange totalled 144.7 tonnes in July. So far this year, 1129 tonnes of gold have been withdrawn from the SGE vaults.During July, the Russian central bank purchased a further 12 tonnes of gold for its official reserves,... Continue Reading

Mnuchin’s Fort Knox Visit Proves Nothing About U.S. Gold

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• Ronan Manly
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On Monday August 21, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, accompanied by the Senate’s Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, and Kentucky’s Rep Brett Guthrie took a hastily organized and rare visit to the US Mint’s gold depository in Fort Knox, Kentucky. This trip into the vault does not appear to have included any media representatives.

According to... Continue Reading

BullionStar Quoted in WSJ Article on New York Fed Gold

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• Ronan Manly
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On 10 August, the Wall Street Journal published an article on its front-page about the New York Federal Reserve’s gold vault, and the central bank gold said to be stored there. The article featured a quote from Ronan Manly about this Fed stored gold. A short blog post has now been added to the the BullionStar website featuring this coverage by the Wall Street Journal, with some... Continue Reading

BullionStar Presents on Real Vision TV

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• Ronan Manly
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During June, Real Vision TV filmed a presentation by BullionStar addressing some topical areas of the gold market. This presentation was originally produced exclusively for the subscription-based Real Vision audience and covers the fractional-reserve gold trading in the London Gold Market, some concerns and risks of gold-backed ETFs, and the benefits and attractions of real physical... Continue Reading

Can Gold Surge to $65,000 in 5 Years?

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• BullionStar
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Although the international price of gold is set by paper gold markets, these markets cannot price physical gold accurately because they don’t trade physical gold. Instead they trade infinitely scalable fractional claims on physical gold. Conversely, real physical gold is not a claim on gold. It is gold. Real physical gold is real money, and is the ultimate form of saving and store of... Continue Reading

LBMA Gold Vault Data: How Low is the London Gold Float?

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• Ronan Manly
• 8 Comments

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The LBMA has just released its first update on the quantities of physical gold and physical silver stored in the LBMA vaulting network in London. This network comprises precious metals vaults of 7 commercial operators and also the Bank of England gold vaults. As of the end of March, there are said to be about a combined 7,450 tonnes of gold and 32,000 tonnes of silver across these... Continue Reading

The West Lost Over 1000 Tonnes of Gold in 2015

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• Ronan Manly
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One of the most important trends in the physical gold world is the ongoing depletion of Western gold inventories to supply the relentless demand for high purity small bar denominations (such as kilogram gold bars). Most of this demand is coming from Asian markets such as China and India. Most of this supply is coming from the London gold market.

Based on LBMA gold refinery... Continue Reading

Estimated Chinese Gold Reserves Surpass 20,000t

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• Koos Jansen

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My best estimate as of June 2017 with respect to total above ground gold reserves within the Chinese domestic market is 20,193 tonnes. The majority of these reserves are held by the citizenry, an estimated 16,193 tonnes; the residual 4,000 tonnes, which is a speculative yet conservative estimate, is held by the Chinese central bank the People’s Bank of China. Continue Reading

July 2017 Gold Market Charts

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• Gold Market Charts
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The July edition of BullionStar’s monthly gold chart analysis has now been published to the BullionStar website.

Physical gold demand in all of the world’s largest physical gold markets remains strong, from robust Indian gold imports to consistently strong gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange. The Russian central bank continues to patiently accumulate further... Continue Reading

Did the Dutch Central Bank Lie About Its Gold Bar List?

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• Koos Jansen

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The Dutch central bank states that releasing a bar list of the Dutch gold “would cost hundreds of thousands of euros”. In this post we’ll expose this is virtually impossible. Continue Reading

PBOC Gold Purchases: Separating Facts from Speculation

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• Koos Jansen

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This post is part of the Chinese Gold Market essentials series. Click here to go to an overview of all Chinese Gold Market Essentials for a comprehensive understanding of the largest physical gold market globally. This post was updated late 2017. In this post we will analyze everything there is to learn about PBOC gold purchases. Grasping the exact size of … Continue Reading

Is the COMEX Rigged?

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• Ronan Manly
• 11 Comments

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Many people will by now have heard of COMEX gold futures price 'flash crashes' during which the gold price collapses in free fall fashion over a few second interval. Whether these flash crashes are the result of trading errors, futures market illiquidity, computerized trading patterns or deliberately engineered moves is debateable.

But beyond the actual flash crash incidents on... Continue Reading

CME Stays Silent on Cause of COMEX Silver Price Glitch

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• Ronan Manly
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Following an incident which caused a large rapid drop in COMEX gold futures prices last week, this week was the turn of COMEX silver where a short-lived and rapid ‘flash crash’ caused the price of COMEX silver futures prices to fall by more than 10% within 1 minute only to rebound strongly in the subsequent minute. While the CME Group which operates the COMEX has not provided an... Continue Reading

Bullion Banks Line Up to Support LME’s Gold Futures

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• Ronan Manly
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The London Metal Exchange (LME) is about to launch a range of new gold and silver futures in the London market (LMEprecious). Crucially though, these gold futures do not deliver physical gold or silver. Instead they transfer around unallocated gold and unallocated silver, units of which are fractionally-backed in the London precious metals markets.

This LME development is also... Continue Reading