As Krishan Gopaul’s blog post last week pointed out, central banks have been buying gold during the first four months of 2021. Over that period, we estimate that the official sector has added 150-200 tonnes of gold.
The World Gold Council is launching the Central Bank Dashboard, an innovative web-based tool that allows the comparison of central bank gold reserve holdings across regions, income levels, foreign exchange arrangement and other qualitative and quantitative indicators.
The Central Bank Dashboard provides users with the flexibility to visualise trends in gold and foreign exchange reserve holdings across a multitude of vantage points.
There has been much debate about the implications of Basel III on the bullion industry. What is clear is that the under the current rules the cost to banks of holding gold on balance sheet will increase – the NSFR requires 85% of required stable funding.
There has recently been a lot of discussion and debate around the possible similarities and differences of gold and Bitcoin (and, by implication, other cryptocurrencies), and this has often included consideration of their relative environmental impacts and, specifically, their carbon footprints.
We have written before about how, after a more inconsistent picture for central bank demand in the second half of 2020, our expectation was for continued net purchases in 2021 but at a more moderate pace than in previous record-setting years. So, how is that expectation holding up?
Listen to this podcast ‘Back to the gold fold’ for topics including US real rates, gold demand trends in consumer and investment markets, the COMEX market dislocation and the differences between gold and cryptocurrencies
The volatility of numerous assets has shifted along with the performance of gold, which has recently rebounded to nearly flat on the year. Given this shift, we consider it important to assess the current gold market conditions from a volatility and derivatives perspective, along with what technical charts are suggesting about where gold could move in the near- and long-term. We believe that regardless of an investor’s gold sentiment, the following conditions are present and create an opportunity:
We’ve had an opportunity to speak to Philipa Varris, Executive Vice President, Head of Sustainability at Golden Star to dig deep into the company’s achievements when it comes to contributing to SDG 3 (Good Health) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).
