JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Global gold holdings in exchange traded funds (ETFs) have topped 2 000 t for the first time since June 2013, London gold trader Sharps Pixley reported on Friday.
The latest increase follows the biggest one-day gain since 2009 in the largest gold ETF, SPDR Gold Shares.
Gold commentator Tyler Durden calculated the 2 000 t-plus ETF splurge as being about twice the size of Switzerland’s gold holdings and a quarter of the US holding.
“Investment demand has been very strong, with institutional buyers of ETFs the big gorilla in the room,” GoldMoney VP John Butler was quoted as saying in the same Sharps Pixley release, which noted that both the Swiss financial services company UBS and the Singapore-based Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation had pushed up their short-term gold price forecasts to $1 400/oz, with ABN Amro raising its end-of-quarter forecast to an even higher $1 425/oz.
Lawrieongold reported on Friday that the Peoples Bank of China had added 15 t of gold to its reserves in June, the largest monthly addition since January, coinciding with a weakening of the Yuan against the dollar.
Trading and storage company BullionVault said Japanese investors were buying gold for storage in Switzerland on negative interest rate concerns.
Nomura Holdings commented through Bloomberg that investors had lost faith in the Bank of Japan’s ability to weaken the yen, against the backdrop of the central bank's introduction of a negative interest-rate policy in January only managing to weaken the Japanese currency for one day before it resumed its march higher, reaching 99.02 to the dollar last month for the first time since 2013.