The Death Of The Gold Market - Why One Analyst Thinks A Run On London Gold Vaults Is Imminent
London (May 8) When it comes to tracking the nuances at the all important margin of the gold market, few are as observant as ADMISI's Paul Mylchreest, whose December 2014 analysis showed the stunning role gold holds in the new normal as a funding "currency" for BOJ interventions in the form of a long Nikkei/short gold (and vice versa) pair trade, indicating that central banks directly intervene in gold pricing (by selling, of course) when seeking to push paper asset prices higher.
In his latest report he follows up with an even more disturbing analysis on the state of the gold market. Specifically, he looks at what historically has been the hub of gold trading, the London bullion market, and finds that it "is running into a problem and is facing the biggest challenge since it collapsed from an insufficient supply of physical gold in March 1968."
We suggest readers set aside at least an hour, and two coffees for this "must read" report. For those pressed for time, the executive summary is as follows: using data from the LBMA and Bank of England on gold stored in London vaults and net UK gold export data from HM Revenue & Customs, Mylchreest calculates that the “float” of physical gold in London (excluding gold owned by ETFs and central banks) has recently declined to +/- zero.
Summarizing the data in the report.
The full details of how Mylchreest gets to this number are broken out in detail in the attached report; fast-forwarding to his troubling summary we read the following conclusion, one we have observed numerous times when analyzing the troubling trends within the gold vaults of none other than the Comex itself: "if we are correct, the London Bullion Market is running into a problem and is facing the biggest challenge since it collapsed from an insufficient supply of physical gold in March 1968."
Some more of the report's core findings, most of which should come as no surprise to regulatr readers:
Besides the growth in physical gold demand from existing sources, there is more than US$200 Billion of trading every day in unallocated (paper) gold. If buyers lose confidence in the market’s structure and ability to deliver actual bullion, the market could become disorderly (via an old fashioned “run” on the vaults) as it seeks to find the true price of physical gold.
Source: ZeroHedge
