BullionStar Blogs

Important BullionStar Update: 27 March 2020

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• BullionStar
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This is an important update to all BullionStar customers covering the situation in the precious metals market. As one of few precious metals dealers globally, BullionStar still accepts orders and has plenty of bullion in stock for immediate delivery. Due to record demand, we have however had to temporarily increase our minimum order for both customer buy and customer sell orders to SGD... Continue Reading

Are LBMA & COMEX Colluding to Lock Down the Gold Market?

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• Ronan Manly
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With extreme demand and supply shortages in the physical gold market, it was only a matter of time before the paper gold markets in London and New York would come under strain. That time is now.

With the spot price of gold lagging the price of COMEX gold futures for the third day running, the LBMA is now colluding with the COMEX on bailing out bullion banks. But who is bailing... Continue Reading

Reuters Confused About Gold Demand, Supply, and Pricing

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• Ronan Manly
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Unprecedented demand for physical precious metals. Unprecedented supply chain delays in the precious metals supply chain. Real and present disconnects between the physical gold price and the prices set by COMEX/LBMA.

In theory you would think that this is all great material for reporters covering the latest developments in the physical gold market in Asia. Maybe for some, but... Continue Reading

Banknotes and Coronavirus

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• JP Koning
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With the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, many people are worried about infected banknotes. Over the last few weeks, central bankers have themselves taken a number of measures to mitigate virus transmission risks on banknotes.

But what does science have to say about the presence of pathogens, such as viruses, on banknotes? Continue Reading

The Window to Buy Gold & Silver With Paper Money is Closing

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• BullionStar
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In the current environment, we are continuing to witness overwhelming demand for physical precious metals, while at the same time scarce supply due to global bullion supply chain issues.

Price discovery for precious metals is now broken, with paper spot and futures precious metals markets not reflecting physical metal demand and supply. This price disconnect is... Continue Reading

Will Gold Be the Last Man Standing in the Perfect Storm?

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• Ronan Manly
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The turmoil engulfing financial markets is unprecedented in its breath and intensity. You might call it a perfect storm. In such an environment, no asset class has been immune. But will gold be the last man standing? Continue Reading

Gold Shortages – Price of Physical Gold Decouples from Paper Gold

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• BullionStar
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With volatility and turmoil continuing to impact global financial markets, we are witnessing a huge increase in demand for physical precious metals amid record orders and customer visits.

The surge in demand has created supply chain constraints, with some of BullionStar’s suppliers completely out of stock.

As the gold price on COMEX is not reflecting this physical... Continue Reading

Infographic: Central Bank Gold Buying & Gold Repatriation

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• BullionStar
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Annual central bank gold demand is currently running at a 50-year high. A whole host of central banks have also recently repatriated gold from London and New York.

But why are central banks buying more gold bars than at any time since 1971? And what has spooked sovereign nations to fly their gold back to their home countries?

With this easy to grasp and visually... Continue Reading

Gold Confiscation – Can It Happen Again?

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• JP Koning
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Democratic governments have forced citizens to sell their gold in the past, the US in 1933 and the UK in 1939. Should modern gold owners worry about similar forced gold sales or seizures in the future? Continue Reading

Physical Gold Demand at Record; Paper Gold Price Disconnect

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• Ronan Manly
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As global stock markets reeled last week on continued newsflow around the coronavirus, the US dollar gold price made a seven-year high early in the week, only to fall sharply on Friday.

But with this ‘gold price’ derived on the COMEX gold futures market, it is detached from the reality of the current strong demand that BullionStar is seeing for physical gold. Continue Reading

China’s Gold Market Not Immune to a Wider Downturn

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• Ronan Manly
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From quarantined cities to lower consumer demand, from reduced flight traffic to closed frontiers and boarders, the economic shock to the domestic Chinese gold market caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus should not be underestimated.

While we can't examine much live data from the Chinese gold market right now, we can review Chinese gold market activity up to the end of... Continue Reading

Eight Centuries of Interest Rates

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• JP Koning
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Today's era of low - even negative - interest rates have been described as absurd, crazy, and an abomination. But economic historian Paul Schmelzing's recent paper covering eight centuries of interest rates shows that periods of zero or negative rates are not rare. Continue Reading

The Shrinking Window For Anonymous Exchange

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• JP Koning
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To help reduce money laundering, German authorities have reduced the amount of precious metals that citizens can purchase anonymously with cash to €2000. While cash limits like this may work in theory, we still have very little evidence to show that the benefits of anti-money laundering regulations exceed the costs. Continue Reading

German Government Escalates War On Gold

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• Ronan Manly
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In a brazen attack on precious metals and economic freedom, the German government has just introduced draconian new rules on buying precious metals.

Brought in with zero evidence under the guise of money laundering prevention, short term it created panic gold buying by Germany’s population but long term it's a continuation of the all too familiar statist war against gold and... Continue Reading

LBMA Claims Record Amount of Gold in London’s Vaults

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• Ronan Manly
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This week the LBMA in London claims that a record 8,228 tonnes of gold is held in the London vaults, vaults which include those at the Bank of England and the commercial vaults of such bullion banks as JP Morgan and HSBC.

But beyond the headline figure, how much of this gold is available to underpin the gargantuan daily trading volumes of the London gold market? Very little as... Continue Reading

A New Era of Digital Gold Payment Systems?

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• JP Koning
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Ever since the internet emerged in the 1990s, entrepreneurs have been trying to created digital gold payments networks. But these efforts haven't garnered much success. Will the newest push, so-called "blockchain gold," make digital gold payments more popular? Continue Reading

Quantum Leap as ABN AMRO Questions Gold Price Discovery

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• Ronan Manly
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In a quantum leap for an investment bank to make, Dutch bank ABN AMRO has just gone on record questioning if a world with two gold prices would be better, one price that would reflect trading of real physical gold, and the other which would represent paper and synthetic gold products.

Although a welcome step from the Dutch bank, it fails to acknowledge the structural forces... Continue Reading

How Militaries Use Gold Coins as Emergency Money

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• Ronan Manly
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Gold is and always has been universal money that can be used anywhere and is accepted everywhere. The world’s elite military detachments know this, which is why they issue their troops and pilots with gold coins and other gold bullion items for use as emergency money when they go behind enemy lines. Continue Reading

Polish Central Bank Airlifts 8,000 Gold Bars From London

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• Ronan Manly
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The Polish central bank has just succeeded in extracting 100 tonnes of its gold from the Bank of England in London, and this gold now rests safely back in Poland in the vaults of the National Bank of Poland.

Moving 100 tonnes of gold - 8000 central bank gold bars - Poland’s gold repatriation operation involved top secret motorcades, elite police escorts, jumbo jet air... Continue Reading

Life Under a Gold Standard

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• JP Koning
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Consumer prices react differently under a gold standard and a fiat standard due to the relative flexibility of each system.

What would life be like living under a gold standard, and how would it differ from our day-to-day and year-to-year experience under a fiat standard? Continue Reading

New COMEX Pledged Gold: Shrinking the Inventory Pool

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• Ronan Manly
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Ever been confused between the COMEX ‘registered’ and ‘eligible’ gold categories on the COMEX New York gold vault reports? You wouldn’t be the first. But now the CME has made it even more complex by introducing a new ‘pledged gold’ category representing COMEX registered gold that has been used as collateral.

But with pledged gold unable to be used for gold futures... Continue Reading

Chinese Central Bank Gold Guying – On a Need to Know Basis

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• Ronan Manly
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After announcing gold reserve purchases for ten straight months between December 2018 and September 2019, the Chinese central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has now paused gold buying for October, at least according to latest figures.

But what to make of Chinese official gold buying communication in general? It’s instructive to look at China’s stop-start gold... Continue Reading

The Power of Gold in Times of Crisis

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• Ronan Manly
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History is replete with examples of gold being the ultimate asset in times of crisis and emergency, where time and time again, gold comes to the rescue and provides its holders with choice and freedom.

These crisis situations range from fiat currencies collapses, to gold buying safe passage across international borders, from periods in which gold can rescue an entire nation, to... Continue Reading

Why Are Gold & Bonds Rising Together?

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• JP Koning
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In the 1970s, gold and bond prices tended to move in opposing directions. This is because higher-than-expected inflation pushes up the price of gold, but hurts the price of bonds.

But over the last two decades, the prices of these two assets have moved together. Why has this relationship changed? Continue Reading

Wag the Dog – the New COMEX & SGE Gold Contracts

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• Ronan Manly
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In a development whose impact is still unclear, the world’s largest gold derivatives trading venue, the US COMEX, and the world’s largest physical gold trading exchange, the Chinese SGE, have just jointly launched gold derivatives contracts, potentially binding each other into a price feedback loop.

Could this be a case of the massively influential COMEX gold trading now... Continue Reading

Why You Should Buy & Store Gold & Silver in New Zealand

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• BullionStar
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With the addition of a bullion storage offering in New Zealand, BullionStar customers can now diversify bullion storage internationally across New Zealand and Singapore, two of the safest and securest precious metals storage jurisdictions in the world.

Geographically located in one of the safest areas of the world, in a stable jurisdiction with strong property rights and a... Continue Reading

LBMA Needs Reform to Serve Physical Precious Metals Market

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• Ronan Manly
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The LBMA claims to be the global authority for precious metals, but it is an organization stacked full of bullion banks which trade gigantic volumes of synthetic paper promises, and an organization which does nothing to champion the interests of savers and investors in physical precious metals.

Founded by a group of bullion banks and the Bank of England, the LBMA and its... Continue Reading

Does Anyone Use the IMF’s SDR?

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• JP Koning
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Introduced by the IMF in 1969, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) were originally devised as a paper version of gold that central banks could hold as a transferable reserve asset.

But in addition to serving as a specialized payments medium, the SDR also acts as a unit of account, or a way of expressing value.

Although the SDR never really took off as a transferable reserve... Continue Reading

LBMA Removes JP Morgan’s Michael Nowak From Board

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• Ronan Manly
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Earlier this week BullionStar broke the news that the JP Morgan head of precious metals trading, Michael Nowak, who is at the center of the DoJ’s criminal investigation into precious metals market manipulation, was also a current board member of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).

Following this revelation, we also talked to the Financial Times on Thursday, which... Continue Reading

JP Morgan's Nowak Charged With Rigging Precious Metals

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• Ronan Manly
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Michael Nowak, JP Morgan Chase managing director and Board member of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has just been charged by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) with manipulating the prices of precious metals-futures contracts over an 8 year period.

Nowak sits on the LBMA Board along with LBMA chairman Paul Fisher, LBMA CEO Ruth Crowell, and LBMA General Counsel... Continue Reading

Rothschild Emerges For Centenary of the London Gold Fixing

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• Ronan Manly
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This month marks the centenary of the London Gold Fixing, with events at both Rothschild’s headquarters in the City of London and at the neighboring Bank of England.

Billed as a momentous occasion by the bullion bank-controlled London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the celebrations gloss over and conveniently forget to mention that the history of the London Gold Fixing is... Continue Reading

HyperBitcoinization

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• JP Koning
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Hyperbitcoinization, a term coined by Daniel Krawisz in 2014, refers to a thesis under which bitcoin, at first slowly and then rapidly, would replace traditional currencies. In effect, bitcoin-induced currency demonetization.

Although bitcoin certainly has plenty of good features, for mass adoption it would have to overcome the network effects of the world's domestic... Continue Reading

Gold, Silver, and Platinum Surge Ahead

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• BullionStar
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Year-to-date (YTD), based on prices at the time of writing, precious metals prices in US dollar terms have been making impressive double digit returns. The gold price has now risen 20.73% YTD, the silver price is up 25.91%, and the spot platinum price is 22.25% higher.

Much of these returns have been generated since early June, when first the US dollar gold price and then the... Continue Reading

China's Gold Imports – Better Data, Unanswered Questions

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• Ronan Manly
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Cross-border gold flows into the world’s largest gold market are now available monthly following a recent move by Chinese customs authorities to publish gold imports and exports in an online database.

While China imported 994 tonnes of gold over the first seven months of 2018, the corresponding import figure for 2019 is a lot lower. But why is this? Is it a move by the... Continue Reading

More On the Puzzle of Negative Interest Rates

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• JP Koning
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While interest rates on many bonds have plunged into negative territory, the real returns on business capital are buoyant. This is a puzzle which suggests both a stagnating and strongly growing economy. But which of the two conflicting interest rates should we trust and why the disparity?

Although improved liquidity, high demand and tight supply may have pushed the price of... Continue Reading

Singapore Rated the World’s Safest & Most Secure Nation

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• BullionStar
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Singapore is perceived to be one of the safest countries in the world with a strong rule of law and a dynamic and liberal economy.

While this is true, it is encouraging to see that these are not mere anecdotal stories or claims, they are facts borne out by the myriad of global rankings which year after year rank Singapore as the safest countries in the world and the one of the... Continue Reading

The Not-So-Crazy World of Negative Interest Rates

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• JP Koning
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Are negative interest rates an artificial phenomenon that central bank technocrats have foisted on the world? Or can interest rates naturally turn negative, of their own accord? Continue Reading

The History of the World is a History of Gold

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• BullionStar
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Gold has been inextricably linked to human civilizations since at least 6000 BC. Gold has been used as money in countless civilizations for thousands of years. From the ancient Egyptians to the Roman Empire, from the Republic of Venice to the Spanish Empire, civilizations may rise and fall but the one constant they all had was gold.

A people without the knowledge of their past... Continue Reading

Gold the Ultimate Asset as Global Central Banks Cut Rates

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• Ronan Manly
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The US Federal Reserve has just cut it’s federal funds rate by 0.25%, the first time it has done so in over 10 years.

This change in direction by the central bank of the world’s biggest economy has more to it than the Fed board will say, and the US now rejoins the global central bank game of currency debasement and QE to infinity.

In this environment, gold tends... Continue Reading

Europe's Central Banks Look Ready to Buy Gold

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• Ronan Manly
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After 20 years and three renewals, the signatories to the Central Bank Gold Agreement (CBGA), a cartel like syndicate of central banks in Europe, have just announced that they will not be renewing the Agreement when it expires this coming September.

While the real purpose of the CBGA was always different to its stated purpose, it appears likely that the Agreement while it ran... Continue Reading

Gold & Silver Manipulation: The Greatest Trick Ever Pulled

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• Ronan Manly
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In addition to commercial bank manipulation of gold and silver futures prices and central bank manipulation of gold by policy, there is arguably another form of manipulation in the precious metals markets which is far more influential in subduing price discovery.

This is the manipulation embedded into the very structure of modern financialized commodities markets, which trade... Continue Reading

How Governments’ War On Gold Leads to Smuggling

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• BullionStar
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On a nearly daily basis, the media across Asia covers cases of gold smuggling into countries such as India and Japan. On the surface this smuggling is undertaken to avoid government imposed frictions such as import or consumption taxes, which distort the local gold price.

But at a higher level gold smuggling is a symptom of a problem. And that problem is that these governments... Continue Reading

Poland Joins Hungary With Huge Gold Purchase & Repatriation

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• Ronan Manly
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In a stunning development which is yet to be fully digested by the gold market, the central bank of Poland announced last Friday that it has purchased 100 tonnes of gold so far this year, boosting its gold reserves to 228.6 tonnes.

While all the Polish gold is still held at the Bank of England in London, this is about to change, and the Poles plan to imminently repatriate... Continue Reading

How Much U.S. Currency is Held Overseas?

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• JP Koning
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While everyone is familiar with the fact that US dollars circulate in many countries around the world, the same is not true of foreign currencies circulating in the US.

The question then is why is there so much international demand for the US dollar, and how much of the total $1.74 trillion paper dollars in circulation globally is in the US and how much is used overseas? Continue Reading

Is Mahathir’s Gold-Backed Currency Just Loose Talk?

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• Ronan Manly
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At a recent conference in Tokyo on the Future of Asia, Malaysia’s perennial prime minister Mahathir called for a pan-Asian gold-backed currency that could be used in international trade settlement.

While an interesting proposal, Mahathir’s idea is a repackaged version of his gold dinar scheme which never really got off the ground.

Asia has the ability to shift to... Continue Reading

What is Money?

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• BullionStar
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For something used by nearly everyone on the planet on a daily basis, the subjects of money and currency are surprisingly little understood and shrouded in mystery. But perhaps that’s the way governments and their central banks like it.

From a time in which only gold and silver were considered money, to a contemporary banking system where debt is created out of thin air and... Continue Reading

The Fifth Wave: A New Central Bank Gold Agreement?

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• Ronan Manly
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With the fourth Central Bank Gold Agreement (CBGA) about to expire in September, a relevant question now is will there be a fifth CBGA?

Devised by a cartel of western central banks, the first two CBGAs achieved what they had intended to i.e. provide cover over 1999 - 2008 to close off gold sales and loans that had taken place years before.

And as China, Russia and... Continue Reading

Gold Price Breakout in Multiple Currencies

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• Ronan Manly
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The gold price is now making new multi-year and all time highs in many of the world’s most important and most liquid fiat currencies, including the commodity currencies of the Canadian dollar and Australian dollar, and other major currencies such as the Swedish Krona, Singapore dollar, British pound and Euro.

A new multi-year high in US dollar gold is also a possibility right... Continue Reading

Here Are Different Ways to Invest in Gold & Silver Bullion

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• Gold & Silver 101
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There are a number of different ways of investing in precious metals, ranging from physical ownership of gold and silver bullion, to taking positions in derivative products which provide exposure to movements in gold prices or silver prices. When looking at ways to invest in gold and silver, it’s important to think about which routes … Continue Reading

An Introduction to Gold & Silver Investing

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• Gold & Silver 101
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Gold and silver bullion are the world’s best-known and most widely held precious metals, and both metals have played key roles throughout recorded history as forms of money, as forms of saving, and as means of wealth protection. Today, physical gold and physical silver in the form of investment bars and investment coins are highly … Continue Reading