{"id":43799,"date":"2013-11-05T09:27:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T14:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=43799"},"modified":"2013-11-05T09:27:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T14:27:31","slug":"gold-lacks-direction-private-investors-buy-indian-consumers-switch-silver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/11\/05\/gold-lacks-direction-private-investors-buy-indian-consumers-switch-silver\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold “Lacks Direction” as Private Investors Buy, Indian Consumers Switch to Silver"},"content":{"rendered":"

London Gold Market Report<\/strong>
\n from Adrian Ash<\/strong>
\n BullionVault<\/a><\/strong>
\n Tues 5 Nov 08:30 EST<\/strong><\/p>\n

LONDON wholesale gold was unchanged Tuesday lunchtime from yesterday or from last week’s finish at $1317 per ounce, as European shares again defied a drop in Asian stock markets to tick higher.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Major government bond prices edged back, and commodities rallied from multi-month lows.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Silver today bounced from a near 3-week low at $21.58 per ounce, more than 6.5% below last Wednesday’s 6-week high.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The British Pound meantime rose to 1-week highs after the European Commission sharply revised its 2014 and 2015 growth forecasts for the UK higher.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That pushed Sterling gold below \u00a3820 for the first time since October 22nd.<\/p>\n

\u00a0“Yesterday was one of the quietest days I can remember for a while,” said Marex Spectron’s David Govett in a note Tuesday morning, “with tiny volumes and very narrow ranges.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0“Trading volume was very light,” agrees brokerage INTL FCStone, adding that turnover in Comex gold futures was barely half its 1-month average, “among the weakest daily turnover” of 2013 to date.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Open interest in US\u00a0gold futures<\/a>\u00a0held flat on Monday, with the total number of contacts now live ending the day virtually unchanged from Friday below 389,000.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The quantity of gold needed to back shares in the giant SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s biggest exchange-traded gold fund, was also unchanged Monday at a 57-month low of 866 tonnes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gold bullishness amongst private investors, in contrast, rose last month to the highest level since April reports the UK’s\u00a0Daily Telegraph, citing the latest\u00a0Gold Investor Index from Bullionvault<\/a>, “the world’s largest online market for buying physical bullion.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0But amongst Indian consumers, the world’s heaviest gold buyers, “Sales picked uponly a couple of days before Diwali<\/a>,” says the Bombay Bullion Association’s Harmesh Arora, commenting on last weekend’s festival of lights \u2013 typically the biggest season for Indian household gold demand.<\/p>\n

\u00a0“It was nowhere enough to match up with last year’s level.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0Thanks to the Indian government’s anti-gold import rules, “This time there were no stocks available,” says All India Gem & Jewellery Trade Federation chairman Haresh Soni, also speaking to the\u00a0Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0“There was also spending tightness due to overall liquidity crunch.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0“This Diwali was a disaster,” the paper quotes one senior jewelry chainstore manager, claiming that pre-festive sales were 50% down on 2012.<\/p>\n

\u00a0“I have never seen such bad festival sales in 20 years,” says the director, Rajiv Popley.<\/p>\n

\u00a0But while “there is less gold available…rural people will gradually move to silver<\/a>,” says Rajesh Khosla, managing director at the part-state owned refiner MMTC-Pamp \u2013 recently approved for production of\u00a0Good Delivery wholesale silver<\/a>\u00a0by the London Bullion Market Association.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Demand to\u00a0buy silver in India<\/a>\u00a0has already doubled in 2013 from full-year 2012, Reuters notes today.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The world’s No.1 end-consumer of silver, as well as of gold, India could be set for a new annual record says a report from Japanese trading house Mitsui, overtaking the previous record of 2008 when India accounted for more than 15% of the world market.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Over in neighboring Dubai, “Jewellery demand has been especially strong,” reports French investment bank and London bullion market-maker Societe Generale, “as it has benefitted from the tourist trade, with the increasing restrictions in the Indian market encouraging Indians to make more purchases [overseas].”<\/p>\n

\u00a0Back in the spot market, “There was no significant economic data…to provide any direction for gold,” says Commerzbank’s precious metals team, adding that silver continues to move “more or less in line” with it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0New data overnight showed Japan’s monetary base \u2013 the total amount of currency in circulation, plus commercial bank holdings at the central bank \u2013 rose to a new record in October for the 8th month running.<\/p>\n

Reaching more than \u00a5186 trillion ($1.9trn), the monetary base stood 46% above October last year thanks to the Bank of Japan’s newly aggressive quantitative easing program of bond and other investment purchases.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ahead of Wednesday’s Bank of Japan policy decision, governor Haruhiko Kuroda said today the central bank “[is] ready to take appropriate policy adjustments without hesitation” to achieve its 2.0% per year target rate for consumer price inflation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Japanese consumer prices were flat year-on-year in September, after 15 years’ deflation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meantime in the United States, any “tapering” of the US central bank’s $85 billion per month in quantitative easing “is a data-dependent program,” said St.Louis Federal Reserve president James Bullard to CNBC.<\/p>\n

Adrian Ash<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

BullionVault<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Gold price chart, no delay | Buy gold online<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Adrian Ash is head of research at BullionVault, the secure, low-cost gold and silver market for private investors online, where you can fully allocated bullion already vaulted in your choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or Zurich for just 0.5% commission.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(c) BullionVault 2013<\/p>\n

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events \u2013 and must be verified elsewhere \u2013 should you choose to act on it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London Gold Market Report from Adrian Ash BullionVault Tues 5 Nov 08:30 EST LONDON wholesale gold was unchanged Tuesday lunchtime from yesterday or from last week’s finish at $1317 per ounce, as European shares again defied a drop in Asian stock markets to tick higher. \u00a0Major government bond prices edged back, and commodities rallied from … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gold “Lacks Direction” as Private Investors Buy, Indian Consumers Switch to Silver”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}