UK gold coin sales jump on concerns over Labour’s fiscal plans
While the possibility of a capital gains hike by Labour adds to the coins’ appeal, it’s one of many potential drivers for the Mint’s increased sales.
On Monday gold staged a bit of a comeback with December futures trading on the Comex market in New York exchanging hands at $1,265.20 an ounce in European trade, up more than $13 from Friday’s close.
Gold has been on the defensive since last Tuesday when heavy selling saw it crash through $1,300 an ounce to a level last seen before the Brexit vote gave it a new leg up. For the week gold lost more than 5% with Friday US jobs numbers pushing the metal below $1,250 for the first time since the beginning of June.
Gold’s weakness gave investors in top physical gold-backed exchange traded fund – SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEARCA: GLD) – an excuse to top up on their holdings. On Friday, investors bought 11.3 tonnes of gold swelling GLD vaults to 958.9 tonnes or 30.8 million ounces.
GLD’s holdings hit a 2016 high early July, but some 23.8 tonnes have been pulled out from the fund’s vaults since then, reducing the value of holdings by $3.86 billion as the gold price retreats. Year to date, holdings are up 316 tonnes.
GLD dwarfs other physically-backed gold ETFs holding more than 45% of the global total and after a few dismal years, GLD rise in assets under management in 2016 surpassed the banner years of 2009 and 2010 when investors caught in the global financial crisis and spooked by quantitative easing piled into GLD.
On August 22, 2011 when gold was hitting record highs above $1,900 an ounce GLD became the largest ETF in the world briefly surpassing the venerable SPDR S&P 500 trust at a net asset value of $77.5 billion.
Gold holdings in the trust would peak more than a year later in December 2012 at 1,353 tonnes or 43.5 million ounces. Global ETFs hit a record 2,632 tonnes or 93 million ounces of gold at the time.
Comments
Dennis
“GLD’s holdings hit a 2016 high early July, but some 23.8 tonnes have been pulled out from the fund’s vaults since then, reducing the value of holdings by $3.86 billion as the gold price retreats. Year to date, holdings are up 316 tonnes.”
Frik Els, I frequently see you making these claims but I’ve yet to see you provide any substantial evidence to support these claims. How reliable are GLD’s holding reports? GLD does not give retail investors the right to redeem for any of its mystery physical gold holdings. This fact alone ensures the GLD shares to be nothing more than paper at the end of the day. GLD also has a glaring audit loophole in their prospectus that states they have no right to audit subcustodial gold holdings. To this day, I have not heard of a single good reason for the existence of this backdoor to the fund. Some other red flags I’ve stumbled upon, verified and welcome everyone else to verify for themselves:
“Did anyone try calling the GLD hotline at (866) 320 4053 in search of numerical details on GLD’s insurance? The prospectus vaguely states “The Custodian maintains insurance with regard to its business on such terms and conditions as it considers appropriate which does not cover the full amount of gold held in custody.” When I asked about how much of the gold was insured, the representative proceeded to act as if he didn’t know and said they were just the “marketing agent” for GLD. What kind of marketing agent would not know such basic information about a product they are marketing? It seems like they are deliberately hiding information from investors.
I remember there was a highly publicized visit by CNBC’s Bob Pisani to GLD’s gold vault. This visit was organized by GLD’s management to prove the existence of GLD’s gold but the gold bar held up by Mr. Pisani had the serial number ZJ6752 which did not appear on the most recent bar list at that time. It was later discovered that this “GLD” bar was actually owned by ETF Securities.”