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Ronan Manly is a precious metals analyst with BullionStar whose blogs
often cover current themes including what's going on in the
London gold market and the gold activities of central banks.
Ronan Manly
4 Comments
After 20 years and three renewals, the signatories to the Central Bank Gold Agreement (CBGA), a cartel like syndicate of central banks in Europe, have just announced that they will not be renewing the Agreement when it expires this coming September.
While the real purpose of the CBGA was always different to its stated purpose, it appears likely that the Agreement while it ran... Continue Reading 
Ronan Manly 11 Comments
In addition to commercial bank manipulation of gold and silver futures prices and central bank manipulation of gold by policy, there is arguably another form of manipulation in the precious metals markets which is far more influential in subduing price discovery.
This is the manipulation embedded into the very structure of modern financialized commodities markets, which trade... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 5 Comments
In a stunning development which is yet to be fully digested by the gold market, the central bank of Poland announced last Friday that it has purchased 100 tonnes of gold so far this year, boosting its gold reserves to 228.6 tonnes.
While all the Polish gold is still held at the Bank of England in London, this is about to change, and the Poles plan to imminently repatriate... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 4 Comments
At a recent conference in Tokyo on the Future of Asia, Malaysia’s perennial prime minister Mahathir called for a pan-Asian gold-backed currency that could be used in international trade settlement.
While an interesting proposal, Mahathir’s idea is a repackaged version of his gold dinar scheme which never really got off the ground.
Asia has the ability to shift to... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 6 Comments
With the fourth Central Bank Gold Agreement (CBGA) about to expire in September, a relevant question now is will there be a fifth CBGA?
Devised by a cartel of western central banks, the first two CBGAs achieved what they had intended to i.e. provide cover over 1999 - 2008 to close off gold sales and loans that had taken place years before.
And as China, Russia and... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 4 Comments
The gold price is now making new multi-year and all time highs in many of the world’s most important and most liquid fiat currencies, including the commodity currencies of the Canadian dollar and Australian dollar, and other major currencies such as the Swedish Krona, Singapore dollar, British pound and Euro.
A new multi-year high in US dollar gold is also a possibility right... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 0 Comments
In the midst of non-stop headlines about the US Chinese trade war and its associated tariffs, one sector of the Chinese economy which is business as usual is the Chinese gold market.
From metrics of SGE gold withdrawals to central bank gold purchases, from Chinese gold imports to Chinese gold mining, the world’s biggest gold market continues to siphon off huge quantities of... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 2 Comments
In a move that is anything but ‘leveling the playing field’ in the London bullion market, the LBMA has now moved to charging US$ 1500 per month for even a glimpse into the shadowy trading data of the opaque bullion banks in London.
Going completely against the spirit of the UK Fair and Efficient Markets Review, while maintaining the fiction of increased transparency, the... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 7 Comments
On its sporadic visits to the US Mint’s bullion depository at West Point, New York, the attending media only ever sees a ‘working vault’ of about 3000 gold bars used as input into the Mint’s bullion coin minting programs.
This is despite the West Point Mint claiming to store 54 million ounces (135,000 gold bars) across 11 ‘deep storage’... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 1 Comments
With news that the French Bank, SocGen, has exited from market making in the London gold and silver markets, does this signal something amiss and the beginnings of a new wave of defections, as further bullion banks run for the exits?
This latest departure by SocGen now means that four of the five members of the former infamous Gold Fixing auctions in London have now run into... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 9 Comments
A new survey in Germany finds that the German public holds over 8900 tonnes of gold, with a majority of this gold held in the form of investment gold bars and gold coins.
This is quite a staggering number and is more than 2.6 times the amount of gold held by Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank.
German citizens hold gold as a form of wealth preservation and as a... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 1 Comments
As China and Russia continue to make headlines with their ongoing and long-term accumulation of strategic gold reserves, in Europe central banks and their governments are increasingly coming into conflict on the issues of gold ownership and control of national gold reserves.
Two prime examples in this space right now are the gold repatriation legislation making its way... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 20 Comments
With over 60 tonnes of gold stored at the Bank of England in London, moves are now afoot in the Romanian Parliament to force Romania’s central bank to repatriate most of this gold back from London to Bucharest.
If this move is successful, Romania will join the growing list of European nations, such as neighbouring Hungary and Austria, that choose to store their gold, not at... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 7 Comments
Following recent BullionStar coverage of the gold reserves of the Australian central bank claimed to be stored at the Bank of England, Australia’s gold continues to hit the headlines as a group of Aussie politicians host a public hearing quizzing the central bank heads about this very gold.
Unfortunately for the Australian population, due to what looks like a whitewash with a... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 4 Comments
Recently, news network RT.com asked for BullionStar's comments on the question of the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) gold reserves supposedly stored at the Bank of England's gold vaults in London.
Using some of these comments, RT has now published an article on the topic on its English language news website.
Since the full set of RT questions and BullionStar's... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 5 Comments
Italy claims to be the third largest sovereign gold holder in the world, with more than 2450 tonnes of monetary gold holdings.
As populist political parties in Italy come to the fore, the question of whether to harness some of Italy's gold through gold sales has recently been raised.
But who actually owns the Italian gold? Italy's central bank, the Bank of Italy, says... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 51 Comments
It is now an established fact that the Bank of England has been stalling for months in its refusal to allow stored gold to be withdrawn from London by the central bank of Venezuela.
Taking its orders from the UK and US governments, the reputation of the Bank of England as a safe and secure location for the gold bars of the world’s central banks looks now to have been... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 5 Comments
After a two year silence, the Chinese central bank has come back to the table with an announcement that it purchased 10 tonnes of gold in December 2018. The last time it claims to have bought gold was in October 2016.
To an already skeptical audience, it is difficult to believe that the Chinese were not buying gold all through 2017 and 2018. Especially since their powerful... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 11 Comments
The Russian central bank has bought so much gold this year that its purchases now exceed the amount of gold mined in Russia during 2018.
But with a policy of buying domestic gold mining output, the central bank will now need to look further afield to fulfill its gold reserve purchase requirements.
As existing agents of the central bank, the large Russian commercial... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 19 Comments
As one of the world’s largest custodians of central bank gold, the Bank of England is attracting unwanted attention in a bizarre saga involving 14 tonnes of Venezuela’s gold.
A whole cast of colorful characters has recently emerged on both sides, those wanting the gold to be returned and those wanting the gold to be confiscated. Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 2 Comments
The gold lending market is arguably the most secretive and opaque market in the world with little known about its workings and less about its transactions and outstanding gold lending positions.
While London is the core hub for this secretive market, one of the giants of bullion banking, JP Morgan, has recently confirmed that it is facilitating central bank gold lending in... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 7 Comments
Following on nearly four years after the UK financial authorities released a report titled the Fair and Efficient Markets Review, the London Bullion Market Association has finally released a new report showing trading volumes in the London gold and silver markets.
While the new data confirms the long standing view that gold trading in London is predominantly synthetic paper... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 32 Comments
A number of news stories have circulated recently that Venezuela is having difficulty withdrawing 14 tonnes of its gold from the Bank of England vaults in London.
While official sources quoted in these articles offer explanations for the delay which are clearly bogus, and the real reason is one of politics, Venezuela's inability to withdraw its gold from the Bank of England... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 2 Comments
Central bank gold demand has hit the headlines recently due to additional central banks announcing gold purchases as well as an overall increase in the amount of gold which these banks as a group claim to be buying.
But it is dangerous for the media and the World Gold Council to group all central bank gold purchases into the same basket, since the motivations of individual... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 3 Comments
In dramatic news for the gold market, the central bank of Hungary has just announced that it has increased its strategic gold reserves by 10-fold from 3.1 tonnes to 31.5 tonnes. That's a 1000% increase.
Not only that, but the Hungarian central bank has also repatriated all of this newly purchased gold to Hungary, some 28.4 tonnes, signalling the geo-strategic nature of this... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 5 Comments
When BullionStar ran a Twitter survey to find out what percentage of people believe the official Chinese claim about its central bank gold holdings, the results showed resounding skepticism about the official data.
The pool garnered 2337 votes and a full 91% of respondents did not believe the official figure. But within the results there were some surprises.
Given the level of... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 6 Comments
There are relatively tiny quantities of physical gold holdings in LBMA London vaults to underpin the huge amount of 'gold' trading that goes on in the London Gold Market.
On an annualized basis, the equivalent of 1.5 million tonnes of 'gold' are 'traded' in London, however, there have only ever been about 190,000 tonnes of gold mined throughout history.
So what is going on? Enormous... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 0 Comments
In September 2017 at the Denver Gold Summit, hedge fund Paulson & Co led by John Paulson pitched the idea for a 'Shareholders Gold Council' to address the ongoing under-performance of the gold mining sector and its poor shareholder returns.
Initially earmarked for a launch in early July 2018, the establishment of the Council was delayed but has finally now happened. There are 15... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 0 Comments
In an important development for the Chinese Gold Market, the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) has just launched a physically delivered contract for trading Chinese Gold Panda coins.
With this new contract, both institutional and individual investors in China can now trade and take delivery of China's national gold bullion coin, the Gold Panda, direct from the SGE.... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 1 Comments
As key emerging markets such as Turkey and Argentina see their currencies rapidly weakening, there is concern that an emerging markets currency crisis may be brewing. The Brazilian Real and South African Rand have also come under pressure, and in Asia the Indonesian Rupiah and Indian Rupee are now displaying weakness against the US Dollar.
Add in the ongoing currency crisis in... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 1 Comments
There is a relative fixation in the gold industry on new gold mining supply, and the prospects of unextracted gold reserves running out within the next few decades. However, current in-ground gold reserves are not the full picture, since in-ground gold 'resources' are far larger still.
But beyond annual gold mining output, its important to remember that the world's... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 6 Comments
The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has recently published a series of short videos claiming to explain 'Who They Are' and 'How the OTC precious metals Markets Work'.
But a quick glance at the content confirms that nearly none of the subject matter addresses the questions set by the titles. Are they deliberately avoiding the questions? If the answer is yes, then it... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 1 Comments
Take a quick look at most gold investing websites or indeed general investing websites and you will invariably see the names of the HUI and XAU gold mining indexes displayed alongside their respective index 'prices'.
But what are the HUI and XAU indexes, how are they constructed, and who operates them? And which gold mining stocks do they hold? And how do the two indexes differ? Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 6 Comments
With Chinese wholesale gold demand running at over 1000 tonnes for the first six months of 2018 as indicated by SGE gold withdrawals, China's gold market has to principally meet this buoyant gold demand from the key supply sources such as domestic mine production, gold imports and gold recycling.
With Chinese domestic gold production lower in 2018 than in 2017 and 2016, it will be... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 3 Comments
The mainstream media's fixation with the US dollar price of gold is constant and non-stop, even more so as the first half of 2018 drew to a close and a wall of commentary and headlines erupted about the price of gold in US dollar terms slipping on a 6-month measurement scale.
However, it is not the full story, because in some major national currencies as well as in... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 5 Comments
A new Shareholders Gold Council, led by hedge fund Paulson & Co, has recently made headlines with proposals to put the spotlight on the gold mining sector and its underperforming share prices by using an alliance of institutional investors to apply pressure and accountability to gold mining company CEOs and Boards.
All very well, but this Council's strategy has one major shortcoming in... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 0 Comments
In Switzerland, a country famous for its banking sector, a referendum calling for a ban on the ability of commercial banks to create money has just been held.
While approximately 75% of those who voted rejected the proposal, the fact that 25% of the votes (over 440,000 people) endorsed an end to fractional-reserve banking where commercial banks create money out of thin air... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 10 Comments
With political risks between national states on the rise, the locations in which the world's central banks store their gold reserves becomes more critical. Recent news that the Central Bank of Turkey moved all of the New York stored gold back to Europe highlights that the risks of gold confiscation are real and substantial.
Likewise, Russia, the world's fifth largest sovereign gold... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 4 Comments
While the US CFTC and Department of Justice are bringing enforcement proceedings against investment banks and their traders for spoofing trades and collusive manipulation of prices in precious metals futures markets over the 2008 to 2014 period, there is a notable absence of prosecutions and penalties against the same banks for collusive manipulation of prices in the London Gold and... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 2 Comments
Following the charging of five precious metals traders and three banks in January 2018, Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Department of Justice documents reveal a global criminal cabal of 16 traders operating in at least four major financial institutions between 2008 and 2015 to defraud COMEX gold and silver futures markets.
This new guest post by Allan Flynn,... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 6 Comments
Senior central bankers are both terrified of and in awe of gold. Gold to these central bankers is like the sun to vampires.
Central bankers are terrified of gold since its an inflation barometer and an indicator of the relative strength of flat currencies. They are in awe of gold since these same central bankers respect and understand gold's value and power within the... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 9 Comments
The world’s central banks and monetary institutions are attributed to hold a combined 33,800 tonnes of gold between them. Why do these central banks hold so much gold and what are their motivations for doing so?
BullionStar asked the top 40 central bank gold holders to explain why they hold gold as a reserve asset on their balance sheets. Many of these central banks replied, with a... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 4 Comments
For more than 3 years now, the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has promised to publish trade reporting for the London Gold and Silver Markets. After a series of broken promises in 2016, the heads of the LBMA stated categorically throughout 2017 that this trade reporting would begin in Q1 2018.
Just as Q1 2018 is about to end, the LBMA has now announced there will be no... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 3 Comments
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 precious... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 22 Comments
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 reserves... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 6 Comments
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 a... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 0 Comments
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
Ronan Manly 0 Comments
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
Ronan Manly 2 Comments
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 administrator... Continue Reading
Ronan Manly 4 Comments
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 reports... Continue Reading
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