03 December 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Gold fails to hang on to $1,800 level but still trending positive.

Gold breached the $1,800 level on December 1st, but fell back again quite sharply in early U.S. trade a day later before clawing its way back up again to end the week in the high $1,790s. Silver did rather better, although we are wary of its past somewhat erratic price performance. We remain confident on the future price performance for gold and, perhaps less so for silver, but are wary on equities and cryptos due to likely economic headwinds,

01 December 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Gold, equities, bitcoin – all open new month on the up.

The combination of a more dovish statement from Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the latest PCE data release drove gold, silver, equities and bitcoin all higher in the U.S. and globally, with gold breaking through the $1,800 barrier at one time.

27 November 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS:  Fed minutes boost gold and equities towards end of week

With the Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday and the World Cup diverting attention away from the markets there was a relatively quiet week with most sectors performing mildly positively, perhaps encouraged by the release of the minutes from the November FOMC meeting which were taken as suggesting the Fed might start reducing its aggressive interest rate impositions as soon as December.

21 November 2022

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Swiss Gold exports:  UPDATE: China still top. India slips. Singapore climbing

The Chinese mainland remained the top recipient for re-refined high purity gold exports from the Swiss gold refineries in October which continued to see the yellow metal flowing from West to East. However volumes to India slipped while exports to Turkey remained at a high level. Article updated with country-by-country destination chart.

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

LAWRIW 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