The Chinese Gold Vortex

After a long and agonizing winter which was attributed to the so-called “Polar Vortex”, we thought it would be appropriate to highlight for precious metal investors the implications of what we call the “Chinese Gold Vortex”. Over the past year, we have been very vocal about what we consider an aberration: the complete disconnect between gold supply and demand fundamentals and the actual price of the metal.

We have shown in February Markets at a Glance (MAAG) that, for all of 2013, demand from emerging markets, particularly China, was extremely strong, outstripping world mine supply by a fair amount. But this extreme tightness in the physical market was not reflected in gold prices. We have since then discussed many signs of manipulation in both the paper and physical gold markets (ETF flows, Indian intervention, LBMA fixings, to name a few).

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