10 November 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: CPI and Midterms boost gold, equities and bitcoin

The U.S. Midterm elections which saw President Biden and the Democrats perform far less badly than anticipated, closely followed by the latest CPI figures which saw inflation come in lower than expected, saw gold, silver, pgms. equities and bitcoin all surge sharply.

07 November 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Chinese gold demand slips for yet another month

The Shanghai Gold Exchange's latest gold withdrawals data for October has come in at under 100 tonnes, comfortably below last year's level, but above that for Covid-hit 2020. October figures do tend to be anomalous as the SGE is closed for the Golden Week holiday, but the low figure does suggest that overall Chinese gold demand for the full year is likely to fall below that for 2021

29 October 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Fedwatch predictions see aggressive interest rate approach easing

Latest Fedwatch Tool predictions see the U.S. Federal Reserve easing off in its aggressive approach to raising interest rates at future FOMC meetings, which has given a boost to equity markets, supported by a strong Q3 GDP estimate, although this may not be all that it seems.

21 October 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Swiss gold exports stay high to China, India,Turkey. Eastern flows dominate.

September's Swiss gold import and export figures show a continuation of flows from West to East with China, India and Turkey dominating and confirming recent reports on Bloomberg of resultant high premiums in some Asian markets.

16 October 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Blip in China September gold demand y-o-y?

After a succession of months where SGE gold withdrawals this year were higher than a year ago, September saw the reverse and the cumulative total for the year has dropped below that of 2021 despite anecdotal evidence that Chinese gold demand remains strong. We speculate that Russia, though, may be secretively exporting substantial amounts of gold cross-border as traditional western markets are closed by sanctions.

25 September 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: China, Turkey, India biggest importers of Swiss gold in August

08 September 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: China gold consumption still climbing y-o-y

The latest gold withdrawal figures for August from the Shanghai Gold Exchange suggest that Chinese gold consumption continues to rise year on year, but still remains well below its earlier peaks, but it could be making up for any shortfall in domestic production by buying Russian gold.

04 September 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Russian gold going to China, but are amounts as tiny as reported?

The Moscow Times reports on Russian gold shipments to China, but in amounts so small that it raises the question as to their accuracy given Russia's needs to finance its Ukraine war and China's perceived desire to build its own gold reserves.

29 August 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Gold far better performer ytd than equities or bitcoin

The gold price may have looked weak in recent weeks, but in comparison with equities and bitcoin it has been doing extremely well. We compare gold's performance year to date with these other two asset classes which both look vulnerable to further sharp falls as we seem to be heading for a global recession.

23 August 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: China back on top for Swiss gold exports

July's Swiss gold export figures were much higher than for the previous three months and show that China returned, after a gap of several months, to being the top recipient that month, replacing India which dropped to fourth.