Real Gold vs Pretend Gold
The battle continued in 2019, and rarely has the disparity been this sharp.
And what do we mean?
Well, on one hand, you have real physical gold. This is gold that you store yourself or at a trusted vaulting company. This is gold that you can actually hold in your hands. This is the gold that is demanded at record levels by central banks around the globe.
On the other hand, we have pretend gold. This is the domain of the bullion banks. They offer futures contracts, unallocated accounts, and ETFs…all as an alternative to the real thing and as a way of increasing the total supply of “gold” in what amounts to a modern day alchemy.
What’s astonishing is that the investment world allows a physical price to be determined through the trading of the pretend alternative. More on that in a minute. But first, let’s look at two data points that stand in stark contrast to each other.
First, there’s demand for the real thing: physical gold. One great story in 2019 was how the Polish central bank purchased—and then demanded immediate delivery of—about 100 metric tonnes of physical gold. The Poles are no dummies, and they apparently wanted no part of the unallocated promises from the LBMA: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25…
In total, it appears that reported central bank demand for gold will exceed 670 metric tonnes in 2019. This follows what was a 50-year record demand of 641 metric tonnes in 2018. This from the World Gold Council at the end of Q32019: https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/gold-demand-…
So, as price rose by 18% in 2019, a logical conclusion would be that this was due to strong physical demand. And that conclusion would be mostly correct. This is Econ 101. Surging demand often leads to higher prices, and the central banks alone soaked up nearly 25% of global gold production in 2019.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
