Ronan Manly

US Gold Reserves, Of Immense Interest to Russia and China

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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 reserves... 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 a... Continue Reading

LME gold and 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

Neck and Neck: Russian and 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

LBMA Silver Price Benchmark – Changes, but no Wider Participation

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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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 administrator... Continue Reading

Mnuchin’s PR Visit to Fort Knox proves nothing about the US Gold Reserves

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• Ronan Manly
• 4 Comments

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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 reports... Continue Reading

BullionStar quoted in Wall Street Journal article on New York Fed Gold

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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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 Presentation on Real Vision TV – Bullion Banking, ETFs & Physical Gold

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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

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 at least another 1000 tonnes of large gold bars in 2015

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• Ronan Manly
• 6 Comments

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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 production... 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 the... Continue Reading

CME Stays Silent on Cause of COMEX Silver Price Glitch

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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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 in London to support LME’s Gold Futures

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• Ronan Manly
• 0 Comments

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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

How many Silver Bars are in the LBMA Vaults in London?

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• Ronan Manly
• 4 Comments

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BullionStar has previously analyzed how many gold bars are in the LBMA London gold vaults. Now we turn our attention to how many real physical silver bars are in those same LBMA London vaults. The subject is topical because the LBMA is about to start reporting the total quantity of both gold and silver stored in its network of vaults in London.

But whereas with gold, the vast... Continue Reading

Are the World’s Billionaire Investors Actually Buying Gold?

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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The mainstream financial media regularly records the interest in gold from some of the world’s most famous hedge fund managers. But are these legendary investors, all of whom are billionaires, actually buying real physical gold, or are they using paper proxies such as gold futures, gold-backed ETFs, or even gold mining stocks? This new article from BullionStar aims to find out, and... Continue Reading

New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle: Part 2 – Pool vs Gold for Oil

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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Following last week’s publication of “New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle, Switzerland, Part 1”, there now follows Part 2 of this two-part series. Part 2 continues to examine how in the early 1980s, the world's most powerful central bankers who met at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland called for the launch of a central bank Gold Pool cartel so as to manipulate... Continue Reading

An update on SGE Vault Withdrawals and SGE Price Premiums

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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With four months of gold withdrawal data now released by the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) covering January to April, the year 2017 is shaping up to be one of very high gold demand in the Chinese market. SGE gold withdrawal figures are a suitable proxy to measure wholesale Chinese gold demand because nearly all gold entering the market is required to flow through the Exchange. SGE gold... Continue Reading

New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle, Switzerland: Part 1

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• Ronan Manly
• 7 Comments

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Many people are familiar with the London Gold Pool which operated between 1961 and 1968 to control the price of gold in the London gold market. But very few people are aware that more than 11 years later, the same set of Western central banks, at central bank governor level, met in secrecy at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) over an extended period during 1979 and 1980 and... Continue Reading

SGE Trading Volumes surged by 43% in 2016 led by OTC and Deferred Trading

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• Ronan Manly
• 0 Comments

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Trading volumes on the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), the world's largest physical gold trading venue, have nearly tripled over the last 3 years. Full year volumes for 2016 came in at over 24,300 tonnes, a 43% rise on 2015's 17,000 tonnes. The equivalent figure for 2014 was 9243 tonnes. Much of the growth in volumes is coming from OTC trading of the 1 kilogram 9999 fine gold contract,... Continue Reading

Summer of 17: LBMA Confirms Upcoming Publication of London Gold Vault Holdings

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has now confirmed that it will begin publishing gold and silver holdings data for the London based commercial precious vaults sometime during the summer of 2017. Details on this new data are still sketchy as the press release issued by the LBMA has not confirmed in what format the data will be issued, what historical time periods if any will... Continue Reading

Bank of England releases new data on its gold vault holdings

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• Ronan Manly
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The Bank of England has just published new data on its website detailing month-end gold custody holdings for gold held within its vaults. This data covers every month for the last 6 years i.e. from January 2012 to December 2016. Going forward, the Bank of England will publish updates to this data with a 3 month lag. The new gold vault data will be very useful for seeing the ebbs and... Continue Reading

Sweden’s Gold Reserves: 10,000 gold bars shrouded in Official Secrecy

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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In October 2013, the Swedish central bank, the Riksbank, for the first time revealed the storage locations of its sizeable gold bar reserves. Sweden claims to hold 125.7 tonnes of gold scattered across central bank gold vaults in New York, London, Canada, Switzerland and also in Sweden. At the time, the Riksbank also claimed it was going to start to physically audit this gold. Fast... Continue Reading

Death Spiral for the LBMA Gold and Silver auctions?

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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This week the LBMA Silver Price and LBMA Gold Price daily auctions were both hit by unusual price movements over two consecutive days, on 10 April and 11 April. In both cases, the prices being quoted in the auctions deviated noticeably from their respective spot prices. There is little information on what exactly happened in the silver auction since none of CME (calculation agent),... Continue Reading

German and Swiss Precious Metals Refiners join forces as Heraeus acquires Argor-Heraeus

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• Ronan Manly
• 0 Comments

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Following the July 2015 acquisition of Swiss gold and silver Valcambi by Indian group Rajesh Exports, and the July 2016 acquisition of Swiss precious metals refiner Metalor Technologies by Japanese Tanaka Precious Metals, it has now been announced that German industrial group Heraeus, a leading precious refiner, has moved to fully acquire the giant Argor-Heraeus gold and silver refinery... Continue Reading

Mexico’s Earmarked Gold Bars at the Bank of England vaults

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• Ronan Manly
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In response to a Freedom of Information Request by Mexican financial writer Guillermo Barba, Mexico’s central bank Banixco, has just a released a quite comprehensive list of 7265 gold bars that it holds in the Bank of England’s gold vaults. This is unusual in that very few central banks ever allow publication of such a list. While the Banixco list does not include real serial... Continue Reading

More Bad News for the LBMA Silver Price, but an Opportunity for Overhaul

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• Ronan Manly
• 6 Comments

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News that Thomson Reuters and the CME intend to abandon ship as administrator and calculation agent of the LBMA Silver Price auction has raised more than a few eyebrows, especially since they appear to be linking the exit to the introduction of new European Benchmark Regulations. Whatever the reason for their departure mid-way through their service provision contract, it now provides a... Continue Reading

Germany’s Gold remains a Mystery as Mainstream Media cheer leads

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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The Deutsche Bundesbank’s announcement in early February that it had moved 300 tonnes of gold from the New York Fed to Frankfurt in a laughable 4 years threw the mainstream financial media into a back-slapping frenzy as they rushed to congratulate the German central bank for an exercise that should have only taken a couple of weeks to complete. Back in 1967 and 1968, the very same NY... Continue Reading

A Chink of Light into London’s Gold Vaults?

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• Ronan Manly
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A chink of light may be about to shine on the gold bars held in the London Gold Market vaults. Both the Bank of England and London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) have announced that relatively soon, they will begin to publish data on the quantity of gold physically held in the series of vaults that make up the London gold vaulting network. More data than less is always welcome,... Continue Reading

Lukewarm start for new London Gold Futures Contracts

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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In late 2016, three financial exchange providers each announced in rapid succession the launch of a London based gold futures contract. These providers are the London Metal Exchange (LME), Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), and the CME Group. ICE and CME gold futures contracts have gone live in the last 2 weeks, but neither has seen a single trade. LME plans to launch its gold futures... Continue Reading

Ireland’s Monetary Gold Reserves: High Level Secrecy vs. Freedom of Information – Part 2

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• Ronan Manly
• 5 Comments

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This article, the second in a series, looks at the difficulty experience in obtaining basic information out of the Central Bank of Ireland about Ireland's monetary gold reserves, even while using a Freedom of Information request. The Request was refused, and then on appeal partially actioned. However, throughout the process there was a feeling that the Central Bank was not divulging the... Continue Reading

Ireland's Monetary Gold Reserves - High Level Secrecy vs FOI

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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Obtaining basic details about central bank gold holdings is a subject which without exception the mainstream financial media never appears to broach. However, various independent researchers have documented attempts at obtaining such details of sovereign / central bank gold holdings. This article (Part 1) and its sequel (Part 2) add to the documented evidence by summarising how a series... Continue Reading

Who Owns the World’s Largest Gold Hoards? – Not the Central Banks!

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• Ronan Manly
• 4 Comments

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Given that central banks are extremely secretive about 'their' gold reserves, it's important to note that the majority of these central banks do not even own the gold that they go to great lengths to hide the details of. In most cases, the sovereign states which the central banks answer to own the gold. Taken to its logical conclusion, the citizens of the sovereign states own the gold,... Continue Reading

COMEX and ICE New York Gold Vault Reports both Overstate Eligible gold Inventories

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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Gold futures trade in New York on both the COMEX & ICE exchanges. Both exchanges also utilize the same network of approved gold vault facilities located in and around New York City. However, neither the ICE vault report nor the COMEX vault report takes account of the other Exchange's registered gold. Therefore both reports overstate the true amount of eligible gold in each of the... Continue Reading

Guest Post: How to Trigger a Silver Avalanche by a Pebble: "Smash(ed) it Good"

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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UBS and other precious metals traders on how to wreak havoc in silver markets Written by Allan Flynn, specialist researcher in aspects of gold and silver. “An avalanche can be triggered by a pebble if you get the timing right" Earlier this year at April’s hearings for London Silver and Gold Fix lawsuits, the judge and … Continue Reading

European Central Bank gold reserves held across 5 locations. ECB will not disclose Gold Bar List.

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• Ronan Manly
• 4 Comments

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The European Central Bank (ECB), creator of the Euro, currently claims to hold 504.8 tonnes of gold reserves. These gold holdings are reflected on the ECB balance sheet and arose from transfers made to the ECB by Euro member national central banks, mainly in January 1999 at the birth of the Euro. As of the … Continue Reading

Swiss gold refinery Argor-Heraeus to be acquired by Private Equity investors

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• Ronan Manly
• 4 Comments

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News has just emerged in the gold market that the giant Swiss precious metals refiner, Argor-Heraeus, has held discussions to be acquired, and that the likely outcome is an acquisition by a private equity group. This private equity group is believed to be London-based WRM CapInvest, part of Zurich headquartered WRM Capital. Other interested buyers are … Continue Reading

Bullion Banks pass the parcel on El Salvador's gold reserves

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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Eighteen months ago I wrote a short synopsis of a gold sales transaction by the central bank of El Salvador wherein it had sold 80% (about 5.5 tonnes) of its official gold reserves. The title of the post was “El Salvador’s gold reserves, the BIS, and the bullion banks“. If you thought, why the focus … Continue Reading

Tracking the gold held in London: An update on ETF and BoE holdings

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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Just over a year ago, gold researchers Nick Laird, Bron Suchecki, Koos Jansen and myself took a shot at estimating how much physical gold was accounted for in London within the gold-backed ETFs and under Bank of England custody. The results of that exercise are highlighted in September 2015 articles “How many Good Delivery gold bars are in … Continue Reading

From Bank of England to LBMA - The 'Independent' Chair of the LBMA Board

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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In a recent article titled “Blood Brothers: The Bank of England and the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA)“, I charted the extremely close historical and contemporary relationship between the LBMA and the Bank of England. This article highlighted that: the LBMA was established in 1987 by the Bank of England the original bullion bank founding members … Continue Reading

Blood Brothers: The Bank of England and the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA)

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• Ronan Manly
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The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is a London-based, globally active, trade association for “the promotion and regulation of commerce relating to the London Bullion Market”. The “London Bullion Market” here collectively refers to the London Gold Market and the London Silver Market. The remit of the LBMA has very recently also been extended to … Continue Reading

From Gold Trains to Gold Loans – Banca d’Italia’s Mammoth Gold Reserves

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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Italy’s gold has had an eventful history. Robbed by the Nazis and taken to Berlin. Loaded on to gold trains and sent to Switzerland. Flown from London to Milan and Rome. Used as super-sized collateral for gold backed loans from West Germany while sitting quietly in a vault in New York. Leveraged as a springboard … Continue Reading

Guest Post: "Very skeptical" judge - former FBI/SEC official eyes London gold and silver fix lawsuits

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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Written by Allan Flynn, specialist researcher in aspects of gold and silver. Five months have lapsed without decision, since London gold and silver benchmark-rigging class action lawsuits received a cool response in a Manhattan court. Transcripts from April hearings show, in the absence of direct evidence, the claims dissected by a “very skeptical” judge, and criticized … Continue Reading

Chinese Gold Bar Photos – Lost in Translation

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• Ronan Manly
• 11 Comments

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China is now in pole position as regards annual global gold mining output. Much if not all of Chinese domestic gold mining output is refined into standard gold by Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) approved refiners and then sold through the SGE. A lot of recycled gold in China also flows through the same refineries. As of … Continue Reading

IMF Gold Sales - Where 'Transparency' means 'Secrecy'

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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Welcome to the twilight zone of IMF gold sales, where transparency really means secrecy, where on-market is off-market, and where IMF gold sales documents remain indefinitely “classified" and out of public view due to the “sensitivity of the subject matter". Off and On Market Between October 2009 and December 2010, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) claims to … Continue Reading

Is there any gold bullion stored at the US Mint in Denver?

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• Ronan Manly
• 2 Comments

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Anyone with even a passing interest in US official gold reserves will probably recall that the US Treasury claims to hold its gold (8,133.5 tonnes) over four locations in continental United States, namely at three US Mint facilities in Fort Knox (Kentucky), West Point (upstate New York), Denver (Colorado), and at the New York Fed … Continue Reading

The Charade Continues – London Gold and Silver Markets set for even more paper trading

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• Ronan Manly
• 3 Comments

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Today the London Metal Exchange (LME) and the World Gold Council (WGC) jointly announced (here and here) the launch next year of standardised gold and silver spot and futures contracts which will trade on the LME’s electronic platform LMESelect, will clear on the LME central clearing platform LME Clear, and that will be settled ‘loco London’. Together these … Continue Reading

GLD Sponsor dodges disclosure details of Bank of England sub-custodian in latest SEC filing

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• Ronan Manly
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In a July 11 BullionStar article, “SPDR Gold Trust gold bars at the Bank of England vaults”, I highlighted that the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), in it’s Q1 2016 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), disclosed that during the January – March 2016 quarter, the GLD custodian HSBC had employed the Bank of England as … Continue Reading

Austrian Mint sells 41 tonnes of gold coins and gold bars in 2015

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• Ronan Manly
• 0 Comments

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Earlier this year, the director of marketing and sales at the Austrian Mint confirmed to Bloomberg in an interview that the Mint’s combined gold bar and gold coin sales in 2015 had totalled 1.32 million troy ounces, a 45% increase on 2014, while the Mint’s silver sales in 2015 had reached 7.3 million ounces, a … Continue Reading

Execs flee GLD – The revolving door at the SPDR Gold Trust Sponsor

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• Ronan Manly
• 1 Comments

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A remarkable but little noticed development has occurred behind the scenes of the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) over the last 3 years. This development concerns the very high level of executive staff turnover at World Gold Trust Services, the New York based ‘Sponsor’ of the mammoth gold GLD gold-backed Exchange Traded Fund that is listed … Continue Reading

SPDR Gold Trust gold bars being held at the Bank of England

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• Ronan Manly
• 12 Comments

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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