Dwindling Gold Inventories and the Rising Sentiments in Gold
The U.S. Comex gold futures surged 2.73 percent in the past two days to
$1,279.90 on Thursday while the dollar index suffered a loss of 2.17
percent. The CRB Commodities index, the S&P 500 index, and the Euro
Stoxx 50 index have rebounded 1.01 percent, 1.37 percent and 0.64
percent respectively on Wednesday and Thursday. The U.S. 10-year
government bond yield rallied about 6bp in the same period.
Bounce After Bernanke
The U.S. Fed’s speech, rather than the FOMC minutes, has moved the
markets. Bernanke spoke after the market close on Wednesday, saying
that the U.S. economy desires a highly accommodative monetary policy for
the foreseeable future. The Fed wants to tell the markets that
tapering the QE programme does not equate to tightening the monetary
policy, or raising the interest rates. The FOMC minutes reviewed that
many Fed governors would like to see more signs of improvement in jobs
before agreeing to tapering. Both risky assets and gold reacted
positively to the dovish comments by the Fed. The most recent weekly
jobless claims in the U.S. unexpectedly rose by 16,000 to 360,000.
Equities also got a boost after the Bank of Japan has said that Japan is
recovering moderately, and has upgraded its growth forecast for seven
consecutive months.
Paper Investments versus Physical Demand
The CFTC reported that net short positions by speculators reached a
record high of 129,616 contracts as of 2 July. On July 11, Bloomberg
calculated that gold-backed ETP holdings fell to 1,986.47 tons, the
lowest level in three years. At the same time, physical demand has been
improving. The Comex gold inventories have been depleting fast because
the physical buyers in Asia have been taking delivery of gold. The
total Comex and Nymex gold inventories have declined from 11 million
troy ounces in February 2013 to about 7.1 million troy ounces in July,
with the big drop in April and July this year. According to Standard
Chartered, the one-month borrowing cost for gold rose to 0.3038 percent
on 10 July, back to the level of December 2008. If the market realizes
that the Fed is still very accommodative, and the demand for jewellery,
bars and coins continues to rise, then the gold shorts will likely be
squeezed hard.
What to Watch
We will monitor China’s Q2 GDP, June industrial production and fixed
asset investments in addition to the June U.S. retail sales on 15 July,
the U.S. June CPI and industrial production on 16 July as well as Fed
Bernanke’s speech and the U.S. weekly jobless claims on 17 July.
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12 Jul 2013 | Categories: Gold
