Monday 16 December 2013

China Mainland Gold Import Accelerating



http://www.ingoldwetrust.ch/china-mainland-gold-import-accelerating


China Mainland Gold Import Accelerating

This week the the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department officially released their trade numbers from October. Whilst they offer specific numbers in advance to anybody willing to pay, I rather wait for the total booklet to be published free of charge.

Most significant is the amount of gold net exported to the mainland, up 21 tons from 109 tons in September to 130.2 tons in October, + 19 % m/m, +446 % y/y, just shy of the all time record of 130.3 tons in March. Reinforcing an upward trend that started in 2011. Year to date Hong Kong net gold export to the mainland stands at 957 tons, + 200 % relative to the same period in 2012.

Monday 24 June 2013

Russia, Kazakhstan Extend Gold Purchases as Prices Tumble




Russia, Kazakhstan Extend Gold Purchases as Prices Tumble


Russia and Kazakhstan expanded their gold reserves for a seventh straight month in April, buying the metal to diversify assets even as prices slumped the most in three decades.
Russian holdings, the seventh-largest by country, climbed 8.4 metric tons to 990 tons, taking gains this year to 3.4 percent after expanding by 8.5 percent in 2012, International Monetary Fund data show. Kazakhstan’s hoard grew 2.6 tons to 125.5 tons, taking the increase to 8.9 percent this year after a 41 percent expansion in 2012, data on the website showed.
Gold plunged into a bear market April 12 and by the end of the following session had lost 14 percent, the biggest two-day drop since 1983. The drop was driven by some investors losing faith in the metal as a store of value, spurring record reductions from holdings in exchange-traded productsamid speculation that the global economy is recovering.
“Some central banks would have taken advantage of the lower prices to build their gold assets,” said Alexandra Knight, an economist at National Australia Bank Ltd. inMelbourne. “With the general mood in the market quite bearish, perhaps some others are factoring in the potential for lower prices and holding off purchases for now. But the longer-term trend for central banks to increase gold reserves remains intact.”
Gold for immediate delivery, which dropped to a two-year low of $1,321.95 an ounce on April 16, traded 0.4 percent higher at $1,391.43 at 10:53 a.m. in Singapore. Bullion has declined 17 percent in 2013 after advancing for the past 12 years.

Portfolio Diversification

Central banks bought 534.6 tons of gold last year, the most since 1964, and may add as much as 550 tons in 2013, the World Gold Council estimates. While central-bank purchases fell 5.2 percent in the three months through March, they totaled more than 100 tons for the seventh straight quarter, according to council data.
The banks are less attracted to bullion as an overall strategy of portfolio diversification and the price drop should not lure them away from a long-term policy of gold accumulation, according to HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.’s James Steel. Still, reserve managers tend to be conservative and expecting central banks to step in and support a falling market is unrealistic, Credit Suisse analysts including Ric Deverell wrote in a May 22 report.
Turkey’s holdings rose 18.2 tons to 427.1 tons in April, increasing for a 10th month as it accepted gold in its reserve requirements from commercial banks. Belarus’s holdings expanded for a seventh month, while Azerbaijan’s and Greece’s holdings climbed for a fourth month, according to the IMF data.
Mexico cut its gold reserves for a 12th month and Canada reduced holdings for a fourth month, the data showed.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-27/russia-kazakhstan-extend-gold-asset-purchases-as-prices-tumble.html





Wednesday 23 January 2013

Australian amateur prospector finds massive gold nugget

Australian amateur prospector finds massive gold nugget

 An amateur prospector in the Australian state of Victoria has astonished experts by unearthing a gold nugget weighing 5.5kg (177 ounces).

The unidentified man, using a handheld metal detector, found the nugget on Wednesday, lying 60cm underground near the town of Ballarat.
Its value has been estimated at more than A$300,000 ($315,000: £197,000).
Local gold experts say gold has been prospected in the area for decades, but no such discovery had been made before.
"I have been a prospector and dealer for two decades, and cannot remember the last time a nugget over 100 ounces (2.8kg) has been found locally," said Cordell Kent, owner of the Ballarat Mining Exchange Gold Shop.
"It's extremely significant as a mineral specimen. We are 162 years into a gold rush and Ballarat is still producing nuggets - it's unheard of."

Start Quote

There's nothing like digging up money, it's good fun”
Cordell Kent Ballarat Mining Exchange Gold Shop
A video of the Y-shaped nugget was posted on YouTube on Wednesday by user TroyAurum.
He wrote that the man who found it had said it "sounded like the bonnet of a car through the headphones.
"It was lying flat (broad side up) and he carefully dug it up."
Gold currently trades in Australia at about A$1,600 per ounce, meaning the discovery would be worth about A$283,200, but its rarity and the fact it weighs more than a kilogram would add a premium, said Mr Kent.
He told Australian media the prospector had been using a state-of-the-art metal detector, which meant he was able to find the gold relatively deep underground in an area which had been searched many times in the past.
The man had only made small finds before, he said, but was a "person that really deserved it".
"A finding like this gives people hope. It's my dream to find something like that, and I've been prospecting for more than two decades," the Ballarat Courier quoted him as saying.
"I've got no doubt there will be a lot of people who will be very enthusiastic about the goldfields again, it gives people hope," said Mr Kent.
"There's nothing like digging up money, it's good fun."

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21055206

Monday 14 January 2013

Gold Lures Japan’s Pension Funds as Abe Targets Inflation

Gold Lures Japan’s Pension Funds as Abe Targets Inflation

 

Japanese pension funds, the world’s second-largest pool of retirement assets after the U.S., will more than double their gold holdings in the next two years as the new government pushes for a higher inflation target, according to an adviser to the funds.
Assets held by Japanese pension funds in gold-backed exchange-traded products may expand to 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) by 2015 from less than 45 billion yen at present, said Itsuo Toshima, who represented the Tokyo office of World Gold Council for 23 years through 2011.

 
Gold bars are displayed for a photograph at Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry K. K.'s store in Tokyo, Japan. Photographer: Junko Kimura/Bloomberg
New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s pledge to spur inflation to 2 percent and end the yen’s appreciation means Japanese pension funds now have to hedge against rising prices and a currency decline after two decades of stagnation. They’re set to jump into gold after 12 straight years of gains with the precious metal now 14 percent below its all-time high reached 2011. Gold priced in yen reached a record a week ago.
“Bullion’s role as an inflation hedge, long ignored by Japanese fund operators, has come under the spotlight thanks to Abe’s economic policy,” Toshima, who now works as an adviser to pension-fund operators, said in an interview today in Tokyo. “Gold may be a standard asset-class in the portfolio of Japanese pension funds as Abe’s target is realized.”

Pension Funds

Japanese pensions oversee $3.36 trillion, according to human-resource and consulting services company Towers Watson & Co. Corporate pension funds in Japan will diversify 72 trillion yen in assets after domestic stocks produced little return in the past two decades, according to Daiwa Institute of Research.
Japan’s Nikkei-225 (NKY) Stock Average lost 73 percent at the end of 2012 from a record high reached in December 1989, compared with the MSCI All-Country World Index (MXWD), which more than doubled.
The nation’s economy has been mired in deflation, with consumer prices kept below 3 percent since 1991, as the bursting of an asset bubble in the late 1980s led to stagnant economic growth as land values dropped to about half of what they were. Abe wants the Bank of Japan to raise its inflation target of 1 percent.
Bullion posted its longest run of annual gains in at least nine decades last year. Credit Suisse Group AG said Jan. 3 gold will average the most ever this year and joined Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in predicting the 12-year bull market will probably peak in 2013.

Gold in Yen

Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corp., which introduced Japan’s first gold ETF in 2010, expects assets held in the product to double over the next several years from 26.2 billion yen as of Nov. 30. Global investors are holding a near-record amount in gold-backed ETPs that are valued at $139.6 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Local pension funds last year for the first time allocated 2.1 billion yen, or 2 to 3 percent of their assets, in the gold- backed ETF of Mitsubishi UFJ Trust, a member of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. (8306), Japan’s largest lender, according to general manager Osamu Hoshi. The bank is in talks with several pension funds on gold, he said Dec. 20.
Gold rose 70 percent as the Fed bought $2.3 trillion of debt in two rounds of monetary easing from December 2008 through June 2011. The European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and China have all pledged to do more to bolster their economies.
Gold in Japan’s currency reached a record 147,780 yen an ounce on Jan. 2, after climbing 21 percent last year. Gold in dollars reached a record $1,921.15 an ounce on Sept. 6, 2011 and gained 7 percent in 2012.

Federal Reserve

The metal fell last week for a sixth week, the worst run since May 2004, after U.S. Federal Reserve policy makers said they’ll probably end their $85 billion of monthly bond purchases this year, according to the record of the Federal Open Market Committee’s Dec. 11-12 gathering. Bullion traded at $1,651.05 at 5:56 p.m. in Tokyo.
Turnover at Mitsubishi UFJ Trust’s gold ETF on the Tokyo Stock Exchange amounted to 8.67 billion yen in November, exceeding turnover in the SPDR, the biggest exchange-traded fund backed by bullion, and becoming the ninth most-traded fund out of the 140 products listed on the Japanese securities exchanges, data compiled by the bank show.
Mitsubishi UFJ’s ETF is linked to yen-based gold prices on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange, Japan’s largest raw-material bourse. Gold futures on the exchange known as Tocom rallied 19 percent last year, outperforming the 7.1 percent increase in the spot market in London, as the yen declined 13 percent against the dollar.
Assets held by corporate pension funds in Japan amounted to 72.24 trillion yen as of March 2012, declining 0.9 percent from a year earlier, according to Yasuo Sugeno, director at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo. Of the total, about 72 billion yen were allocated to commodities including gold through hedge funds, he said Dec. 10.
Government Pension Investment Fund of Japan, the operator of the world’s largest pension fund with 113.6 trillion yen, stays away from commodity investment as 67 percent of their assets were allocated to Japanese bonds, Sugeno said.
“Pension money invested in bullion is ‘peanuts’ at the moment,” Toshima said. “If 1 percent of their total assets shift to the metal, the gold market would explode.”

 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-08/gold-lures-japan-s-pension-funds-as-government-pledges-inflation.html