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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
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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 
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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... Continue Reading
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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... Continue Reading
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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... Continue Reading
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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... Continue Reading
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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... Continue Reading
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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
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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... Continue Reading
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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
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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... Continue Reading
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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