Tag Archives: Ronan Manly (Bullionstar)

There has been a lot of media coverage recently about the re-emergence of central bank gold buying and the overall larger quantity of gold than central banks as a group have been buying recently compared to previous years. For example, according to the World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends for Q3 2018, net purchases of gold by central banks in the third quarter of this year were 22% higher than Q3 2017, and the...

The first day of each month sees the reporting of a number of statistics about the London Gold Market by the bullion bank led London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). These statistics focus on clearing data and vault holdings data and are reported in a 1 month lag basis for clearing activity and a 3 month lag basis for vault holdings data. Therefore the latest clearing data just published is for the month of August,...

The topic of how much extractable gold is left in the world has become increasingly discussed within the last few years. This is because of increased focus on ‘peak gold’ and also a concern about remaining levels of unextracted gold reserves. Peak gold is a term referring to the phenomenon of annual gold mining supply peaking (i.e. the rate of gold extraction increases until it peaks at maximum gold output and...

With the first half of 2018 now behind us, it’s an opportune time to look at whats been happening in the Chinese Gold Market. As a reminder, China is the largest gold producer in the world, the largest gold importer in the world, and China’s Shanghai Gold Exchange is the largest physical gold exchange in the world. For various reasons such as cross-border trade rules, VAT rules and deep liquidity, nearly all physical...

With the first half of 2018 now drawn to a close, much of the financial medias’ headlines and commentary relating to the gold market has been focusing on the fact that the US dollar gold price has moved lower year-to-date. Specifically, from a US dollar price of $1302.50 at close on 31 December 2017, the price of gold in US dollar terms has slipped by approximately 3.8% over the last six months to around $1252.50, a...

On 17 April, Turkish news publication Ahval published a report stating that during 2017, Turkey withdrew 26.8 tonnes of gold that it had stored in the vaults of the New York Federal Reserve, and moved this gold under the custodianship of the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The source of the Ahval report was a Turkish language article from the popular Hürriyet newspaper in Turkey....

On 29 January 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Division of Enforcement together with the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice and the FBI announced criminal and civil enforcement actions against 3 global investment banks and 5 traders for involvement in trade spoofing in precious metals futures contracts on the US-based Commodity Exchange (COMEX). COMEX is by far the largest and most...

In early March, RT.com, the Russian based media network, asked me for comments and opinion on the subject of central bank manipulation of gold prices. The comments and opinion that I supplied to RT became the article that RT then exclusively published on its website on 18 March under the title “Central banks manipulating & suppressing gold prices – industry expert to RT“. This article is now transcribed below, here...

Collectively, the central bank sector claims to hold the world’s largest above ground gold bar stockpile, some 33,800 tonnes of gold bars. Individually within this group, some central banks claim to be the top holders of gold bullion in the world, with individual holdings in the thousands of tonnes range. This worldwide central bank group, also known as the official sector, spans central banks (such as the Deutsche...

Recently, Russian television network RT extensively quoted me in a series of articles about the US Government’s gold reserves. The RT articles, published on the RT.com website, were based on a series of questions RT put to me about various aspects of the official US gold reserves. These gold reserves are held by the US Treasury, mostly in the custody of the US Mint. The US Mint is a branch of the US Treasury. The first...