Central bank gold buying easing from 1H frenzy

Posted on December 2, 2019 by mjturner1975

If faltering jewellery demand is a a reason to be concerned about the strength of the underlying gold market, central bank buying has been a clear positive, with 2019 set to be another record year for net purchases.

As of October, the latest available data for most countries, there has been a net addition of 550 tonnes to central bank reserves, 17t more than in the whole of 2018 and far ahead of the amount seen in 2017.

Purchases are slowing, however. By the end of the first half of 2019 net purchases had already reached 390t, an average of 65t/month. In the last four months 160t have been purchased, a slower 40t/month. This figure might rise a little – some countries report late, and the trend tends to be higher – but is unlikely to change much.

To what extent is this a concern? A key reason for the H2 slowdown is Russia, the bedrock of global central bank gold accumulation. Here purchases in 1H were broadly inline with previous years, but since then have been much more muted. This is in line with a new policy adopted by the Central Bank of Russia to reduce gold accumulation and has meant an increased rate of Russian gold exports. As such it looks set to be a drag on the global total going forward, albeit one that was inevitable at some point.

Also helping purchases in 1H 2019 was a resumption in Chinese central bank gold buying after a few years hiatus. This too seems to have slowed a bit in 2H but it is too soon to know whether October’s zero purchases marks another cessation of buying or is a temporary pause.

What has prevented an even more rapid slowdown, however, has been an acceleration in purchases from Turkey – on nearly 140t YTD, far higher than in previous years. Whether this will continue is a difficult one to call. Turkey’s central bank gold policy is somewhat confusing given they also hold private-sector gold against reserve requirements (these numbers exclude that), but there has been a policy shift in favour of gold in recent years.

Finally, there is the Rest. And in recent years these have been the great hope of the gold market with a number of big purchases, particular in Europe from Hungary and most impressively Poland. In 1H 2019 other countries added 160t of gold, far more than ever before. In 2H so far barely 10t have been added. However the nature of these purchases mean that they tend to be lumpy.

Indeed if we look at central bank activity, here shown as the number of central banks buying or selling in a month, we see an increase through 2018 in purchases, and a decline in sales, which has since reversed (note I’m excluding the BIS here, correctly, and Turkey, incorrectly, which in most months would add 1 to the purchases line).

If we choose a less granular measure, say 5t/month, the trend is even clearer (note exceptions above).

Source (all charts) – IMF and national central bank websites

So it does look as if there has been a slowdown in central bank buying, and not just because of Russia, which is the biggest impact. One explanation could be the high price, which might make the case for switching into gold harder to explain. But its worth remembering that the pace of buying in 1H 2019 was unprecedented, and current rates are still quite positive. The main concern I have is that Turkey is unlikely to be as reliable a buyer as Russia.

Over time this remains a positive part of the market, and I expect central bank purchases to continue, not least because of the imbalance in global holdings shown here (each country is resized to reflect the size of its gold holdings). For more details see here.

The gold S&D

Posted on November 6, 2019 by mjturner1975

The World Gold Council released its 3Q demand and supply statistics today (from research group Metals Focus). The summary page does a good job in explaining their key findings.

One thing I always look out for is the S&D balance, and in particular the surplus/deficit. From late 2016 the gold market entered a period of very large surpluses – totalling 361t in 2016, 336t in 2017 and 229t in 2018.

It is not clear what this was. It was not ETF demand as that is included separately. It might be what it once would have been called – “western implied investment”. But it no longer correlated to Comex positions. More likely it was to do with China, which had imported more gold than it has apparently consumed in other forms. Whether it was investment, e..g by HNW individuals, or something else, perhaps leased gold, is still unknown. But it didn’t seem particularly bullish – in fact it felt more like a classic price-weighing surplus.

Towards the end of last year the surplus began to fall. The first chart shows both the quarterly surplus, in light blue, and the rolling 12m average, both in tonnes. A big quarterly deficit in 4Q 2018 reduced the average sharply and so far this year though it has totalled 217t, that is down from 300t in the first three quarters of 2018.

So should we be concerned that the defiict in the most recent quarter, 3Q 2019 was higher than 3Q 2017 (95t to 57t)? Probably not. After all the gold price has been strong, and as such the surplus seems more likely to reflect unidentified investment. As I noted before deficits can be bearish – the corollary is surpluses can be bullish.

That said, the 2nd chart, which shows the QoQ change in the gold price (edit – note this is logged change) v the surplus-deficit shows little clear relationship either way (though gold’s largest price fall, in 2Q 2013, did match up to its largest deficit).

A similar analysis can be done for the other line items in the S&D balance. Starting with supply, as might be expected there is no relationship between changes in the gold price and the level of mine production ¹. But there is a stronger one between changes in the gold price and the level of scrap generation ² .

On the demand side jewellery is very interesting, with a strong negative relationship. That is in a quarter when the gold price falls a lot, jewellery demand is high, and in a quarter when the gold price rises a lot jewellery demand is weak. The causation here seems obvious, from price to demand, as the other way around makes little sense. ³. To some extent this is driven by 2Q 2013 again, though it would be wrong to exclude this as that was exactly the kind of price-driven buying we are expecting, and anyway the relationship is nearly as good if we do exclude it.

Bar & coin demand surprisingly, shows very little relationship, either in levels (shown in chart) or changes.

Finally we end with two strong correlations. The first is puzzling. Apparently central banks like selling gold in quarters when the price has risen and like buying it when the price is falling. This suggests a certain savviness and speed not usually associated with the official sector, but might be explained by them targeting a fixed $ amount of gold. More research is needed – and indeed more quarters in which central banks are net sellers, with only one datapoint since 2010.

The next is more intuitive. ETF flows are much larger in quarters when the price is rising and lower when it is falling. Are investors trend followers? More likely they are price-setters, with large short-term physical flows driving the price in either direction.

Source: All charts World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends (data from Metals Focus)

Notes:

If you think it would be stronger against the change in mine production – it’s not ↩
Here though, and elsewhere, there is probably some modelling relationship being captured given the difficulty in directly measuring such flows ↩
Interestingly this correlation is strong, but not stronger, if we use the change in demand ↩

Chinese gold imports remain subdued

Posted on October 25, 2019 by mjturner1975

China imported 62t of gold in September, according to recently released customs data. This is slightly down on last month, above the lows of summer, but subdued compared to earlier in the year and in 2018.

Source (this and all other charts): China Customs, SGE, Matthew Turner, October 2019

Gold imports in the first nine months of the year have totalled 760t, more than a third lower than the 1,242t seen at the same point of 2018.

Of course one factor is the much higher gold price, with western ETF investors bidding up the price.

But in terms of value of gold imported 2019 is also proving a weaker year than 2018, and even, since the start of summer, with 2017.

Is this something for the bulls to worry about? This Reuters story placed the blame for the very weak summer period on quotas restrictions aimed at restricting the outflow of Yuan. These were apparently eased in August, helping explain why imports have picked up a bit. Presumably at the LBMA conference in Shenzhen more was said about this. Such restrictions do suppress gold demand but if only temporary are unlikely to do lasting damage.

Furthermore there is a real sense, despite all the talk of gold being a 200,000t “stock” market, that if ETF investors are buying a lot of gold, the Chinese can’t have as much. The price rises to see who wants it most. So it’s certainly not as concerning as it looks.

Nevertheless it remains concerning. The biggest risk to the gold market medium-term, in my view, is lacklustre”physical” demand, of which over 50% comes from China and India. In particular it seems to me that gold – both as a consumer good and an investment good – now faces far more competitors (eg smartphones, index-linked bonds) than it once did. Of course some of its qualities are unique and it has a long track-record, suggesting a certain robustness. But it pays to not be complacent.

For the background on how China now publishes gold trade data see my LBMA Alchemist piece from earlier this year.

IMF notices precious metals

Posted on October 15, 2019 by mjturner1975

In today’s latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) the IMF devotes a large-ish section to gold and other precious metals (p.47 onwards here).

Perhaps the most interesting section is on whether they serve as an inflation hedge. Finding a positive but weak correlation to inflation itself, the analysts also look at gold prices against modelled inflation risks. Here they are more positive, saying:

Results of the analysis support the view that precious metal prices react to inflation concerns… An increase in inflation uncertainty by one standard deviation tends, within a month, to raise the price of gold by 0.8 percent and silver by 1.6 percent. A decline in inflation uncertainty can explain half of the observed gold price decline of the 1990s and one-third of the price rise after 2008. The role of inflation uncertainty is, instead, positive but not significant for platinum and palladium, yet irrelevant for copper

For many gold’s main advantage is not inflation but against systemic risk. The IMF also looks at this through reactions to S&P 500 moves. This is something I have long done, and the IMF’s conclusions are the same – gold does act as a safe haven when the S&P 500 falls, silver does but less so, and the other metals do not. Here’s one of my versions of this table.

Finally the IMF also mentions precious metals’ sensitivity to dollar moves. But only to express surprise the beta can sometimes be more than 1 (ie if the dollar falls 1%, gold rises more than 1%). I think this relationship – which is partly obvious given we are quoting the price in dollars – needs more discussion and will do so in a later post.

Deficits can be bearish

Posted on October 10, 2019 by mjturner1975

In commodity markets it seems widely accepted that market deficits are price bullish and market surpluses price bearish. Intuitively this feels right. A deficit is when demand is higher than supply and inventories (stocks) are falling. Such a situation cannot go on forever, as stocks are not infinite. Ultimately demand has to fall or supply has to rise, and in the absence of other factors (recession, technology etc) the way this happens is via a rising commodity price.

In practice it is not so clear cut, and the easier it is to hoard the commodity, the less clear cut it gets. For metals, and particularly precious metals, where hoarding is not only easy but often desirable, the picture is very muddy indeed.

Take this S&D for Metalium, a made-up industrial metal. In 2019 1,000 units were supplied by mines, 1,200 were demanded by industry. This makes a deficit of 200, or put another way, a fall in stocks of 200. If I asked you what happened to the price in 2019 you would probably assume it moved higher.

But what if I then told you that actually what happened was industrial users midway through 2019 saw that 2020 was set to be a very bad year for demand and decided to reduce their stocks by 200?

This now seems bearish! Most likely those 200 units flooded the market, pushed the price lower, boosting industrial demand and reduced mine supply.

In other words whether a deficit is bullish or bearish can depend on the reason stocks are falling.

In base metals, where stocks are mostly held within industry and are relatively stable, this latter scenario might not be that common. But in precious metals it happens all the time, as the stockholders are not industrialists but investors. If in an otherwise balanced market a very large investor decides the future of platinum is bleak and sells their holdings of 1 Moz, the market will be in a 1 Moz deficit but the platinum price will be a lot lower.

So on a static snapshot, market deficits are not necessarily bullish. But maybe we can at least say that they imply a higher future price? After all as we noted at the beginning of this piece, stocks are not infinite. A deficit might reflect a bearish investor throwing in the towel, but they can’t keep throwing in the towel. Ultimately there will come a point when there are no more stocks (or no-one wants to sell their stocks) and the commodity price will have to rise to bring supply and demand back in line.

This is more justifiable, though still not always true. Consider these two scenarios:

The industrialists or investors are right in their pessimism, and so a deficit in one year is followed by weaker demand or higher supply in the following year. In this scenario prices don’t have to adjust upwards.
The sale of stock is, in itself, new information that changes perceptions. An example would be if a European central bank announced, out of the blue, it had plans to sell gold.

Finally, for gold, where almost all demand is stockbuilding (by investors, but also by people in the form of jewellery) deficits and surpluses are even less well defined. I’ll have more to say about that in another post.

CBGA ends amid a changing world of official sector gold

Posted on September 26, 2019 by mjturner1975

Today marks the last day of the European central bank gold agreement (CBGA).

Announced on September 27 1999, and renewed at five-year intervals up to 2014, this was often described as a pact to limit central bank gold sales and lending, though arguably its main role was to improve market conditions sufficiently to give space for hefty European sales. From around the mid-2000s European central banks lost interest in selling gold, and as such the pact became rather pointless, the main reason why in 2019 it wasn’t renewed.

Central bank’s attitudes to gold have changed significantly since 1999. Back then global central bank gold holdings still largely reflected the relative economic strengths of countries at the end of Bretton Woods era (1970s). 85% of the world’s 30,300 tonnes of official gold (excluding that held by the IMF & BIS) was owned by the “Advanced Economies”, and almost all of that, 80% of the world, by the USA and Western European countries.

This geographical skew can be seen clearly in the following map, where I’ve resized the countries of the world by their official gold holdings – shows this clearly (ignore the colours)

Central bank gold holdings by country, September 1999 (source: IMF, Matthew Turner)

Fast forward 20 years and a map redrawn to reflect August 2019 gold holdings and at first glance nothing much has changed – the USA and Western Europe still dominate, even if the latter is somewhat smaller.

But look a little more closely and now Russia and Asia are far more visible.

**Central bank gold holdings by country as of August 2019** (source: IMF, Matthew Turner)

This is because there has been a slow shift since the first CBGA was signed in 1999. The “Advanced economies” have sold nearly 4,000t, mainly through the CBGA – with gold holdings in the Eurozone down nearly 1,800t, in Switzerland 1,580t, and in the UK over 300t. Their share is now 70%, down from 85% in 1999. But globally gold held by central banks is up around 1,000t – because “Emerging and developing” economies have added nearly 5,000t. Russia and other CIS countries have been at the forefront of this, but China has also increased its reserves dramatically, and so have a reasonably wide range of other countries, including India, Mexico, and Thailand.

This shift is likely to continue. Certainly central banks are still buying, as noted in Tuesday’s post, with 1H 2019 seeing a record amount. This trend has many drivers but a slow – very slow – loss of faith in the US dollar seems behind some of it, not just in Russia. We’ve not seen any evidence of European selling resuming, indeed the main activity there purchases this year and last by Hungary and Poland. However I would think in another 20 years Western European gold holdings will be lower than they are today.

August: central banks keep buying gold but some signs of fatigue

Posted on September 24, 2019 by mjturner1975

One of the reasons to have been bullish gold over the past 12 months was an apparent step-change in central bank purchases. Not just were traditional buyers such as Russia and China continuing to add to their holdings, but new names were getting involved, including – gasp! – even European central banks.

But after a tremendous 1H, in which net purchases reached nearly 400t, or 65t/month, there does seem to have been a slowdown in recent months. From latest IMF data (and direct central bank publications where necessary) I estimate 22t was purchased in July, and just 16t in August. The YTD total is now 423t.

It is likely these numbers are revised higher. Many countries report late, and given a general bias towards purchases this should mean more to come. In particular Turkey, which has added roughly 9t/month this year, hasn’t yet reported for August. Furthermore central bank gold buying has always been lumpy, for example Poland’s 100t purchase this year mostly in June, and so you do get quiet months.

Nevertheless even those buyers who were buying bought less, with just 11t from Russia and 6t from China in August. Furthermore Uzbekistan has sold quite heavily in recent months. The very high gold price, particular in non US dollar currencies, is perhaps having an effect.

Investment experts – as of 1964

Posted on September 16, 2019 by mjturner1975

The Golden Eggheads

Fascinating BBC documentary from 1964 about the state of the art in investment advice. It starts off in a gold vault but soon expands to cover technical analysis, Professor RF Kahn (of multiiplier fame), an M&A Boutique and some leading fund managers of the day.

The narrator seems close to saying it is all guesswork at times. How things change.

Weak Chinese gold imports nothing to worry about…for now

Posted on September 8, 2019 by mjturner1975

Chinese gold imports were weak again in July, 43t, and the YTD total is now just over 600t, compared to over 1,000t during the same period of 2018.

Is this something for the bulls to worry about? This Reuters story places the blame squarely on quotas restrictions aimed at restricting the outflow of Yuan. If correct this will be artificially suppressing gold demand, but history suggests such periods don’t last long. And it makes sense that if ETF investors are buying a lot of gold, the Chinese can’t have as much. That’s why the price rises. So it’s certainly not as concerning as it looks.

Nevertheless we must continue to pay attention to it. The biggest risk to the gold market medium-term, in my view, is lacklustre”physical” demand, of which over 50% comes from China and India. In particular it seems to me that gold – both as a consumer good and an investment good – now faces far more competitors (eg smartphones, index-linked bonds) than it once did. Of course some of its qualities are unique and it has a long track-record. But that might not be enough.