• Call Contact
  • Help Help
Cart
 
Banner
Ronan Manly

Ronan Manly

Ronan Manly is a precious metals analyst with BullionStar whose blogs
often cover current themes including what's going on in the
London gold market and the gold activities of central banks.

Bullion Bank Nightmare as LBMA-COMEX Spread Blows Up Again
LBMA & COMEX Try to Reassure the Market – Twice in One Week

LBMA & COMEX Try to Reassure the Market – Twice in One Week

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 1 Comments

In the space of a week, the bullion bank dominated LBMA and CME(COMEX) in an air of panic, have issued not one, but two rushed out statements to try to placate the global gold market.

In the modern gold market this is unprecedented. While LBMA-CME claim that physical gold stocks in London and New York are at healthy levels, the reality is far more concerning.
Continue Reading arrow

COMEX Can’t Find a 400 oz Gold Bar For New Futures Contract
Are LBMA & COMEX Colluding to Lock Down the Gold Market?
Reuters Confused About Gold Demand, Supply, and Pricing
Will Gold Be the Last Man Standing in the Perfect Storm?

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

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 3 Comments

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 arrow

Physical Gold Demand at Record; Paper Gold Price Disconnect

Physical Gold Demand at Record; Paper Gold Price Disconnect

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 20 Comments

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 arrow

China’s Gold Market Not Immune to a Wider Downturn

China’s Gold Market Not Immune to a Wider Downturn

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 2 Comments

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 arrow

German Government Escalates War On Gold

German Government Escalates War On Gold

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 9 Comments

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 arrow

LBMA Claims Record Amount of Gold in London’s Vaults
Quantum Leap as ABN AMRO Questions Gold Price Discovery
How Militaries Use Gold Coins as Emergency Money

How Militaries Use Gold Coins as Emergency Money

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 3 Comments

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 arrow

Polish Central Bank Airlifts 8,000 Gold Bars From London

Polish Central Bank Airlifts 8,000 Gold Bars From London

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 0 Comments

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 arrow

New COMEX Pledged Gold: Shrinking the Inventory Pool
Chinese Central Bank Gold Guying – On a Need to Know Basis
The Power of Gold in Times of Crisis

The Power of Gold in Times of Crisis

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 6 Comments

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 arrow

Wag the Dog – the New COMEX & SGE Gold Contracts

Wag the Dog – the New COMEX & SGE Gold Contracts

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 4 Comments

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 arrow

LBMA Needs Reform to Serve Physical Precious Metals Market
LBMA Removes JP Morgan’s Michael Nowak From Board

LBMA Removes JP Morgan’s Michael Nowak From Board

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 3 Comments

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 arrow

JP Morgan's Nowak Charged With Rigging Precious Metals
Rothschild Emerges For Centenary of the London Gold Fixing
China's Gold Imports – Better Data, Unanswered Questions
Gold the Ultimate Asset as Global Central Banks Cut Rates

Gold the Ultimate Asset as Global Central Banks Cut Rates

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 8 Comments

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 arrow

Europe's Central Banks Look Ready to Buy Gold

Europe's Central Banks Look Ready to Buy Gold

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 4 Comments

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 arrow

Gold & Silver Manipulation: The Greatest Trick Ever Pulled
Poland Joins Hungary With Huge Gold Purchase & Repatriation
Is Mahathir’s Gold-Backed Currency Just Loose Talk?

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

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 4 Comments

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 arrow

The Fifth Wave: A New Central Bank Gold Agreement?

The Fifth Wave: A New Central Bank Gold Agreement?

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 6 Comments

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 arrow

Gold Price Breakout in Multiple Currencies

Gold Price Breakout in Multiple Currencies

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 4 Comments

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 arrow

Still Firing on All Cylinders: China’s Physical Gold Market
LBMA Shows Contempt For Wider Gold & Silver Markets

LBMA Shows Contempt For Wider Gold & Silver Markets

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 2 Comments

In a move that is anything but ‘leveling the playing field’ in the London bullion market, the LBMA has now moved to charging US$ 1500 per month for even a glimpse into the shadowy trading data of the opaque bullion banks in London.

Going completely against the spirit of the UK Fair and Efficient Markets Review, while maintaining the fiction of increased transparency, the...
Continue Reading arrow

A West Point Vault is the Only Gold the U.S. Shows

A West Point Vault is the Only Gold the U.S. Shows

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 7 Comments

On its sporadic visits to the US Mint’s bullion depository at West Point, New York, the attending media only ever sees a ‘working vault’ of about 3000 gold bars used as input into the Mint’s bullion coin minting programs.

This is despite the West Point Mint claiming to store 54 million ounces (135,000 gold bars) across 11 ‘deep storage’...
Continue Reading arrow

SocGen Ceases Precious Metals Market Making

SocGen Ceases Precious Metals Market Making

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 1 Comments

With news that the French Bank, SocGen, has exited from market making in the London gold and silver markets, does this signal something amiss and the beginnings of a new wave of defections, as further bullion banks run for the exits?

This latest departure by SocGen now means that four of the five members of the former infamous Gold Fixing auctions in London have now run into...
Continue Reading arrow

The Vast Gold Hoards Held by Germany’s Population

The Vast Gold Hoards Held by Germany’s Population

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 9 Comments

A new survey in Germany finds that the German public holds over 8900 tonnes of gold, with a majority of this gold held in the form of investment gold bars and gold coins.

This is quite a staggering number and is more than 2.6 times the amount of gold held by Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank.

German citizens hold gold as a form of wealth preservation and as a...
Continue Reading arrow

When Politicians & Central Banks Clash

When Politicians & Central Banks Clash

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 1 Comments

As China and Russia continue to make headlines with their ongoing and long-term accumulation of strategic gold reserves, in Europe central banks and their governments are increasingly coming into conflict on the issues of gold ownership and control of national gold reserves.

Two prime examples in this space right now are the gold repatriation legislation making its way...
Continue Reading arrow

The Domino Effect: Romania Joins Gold Repatriation Exodus
Aussie Politicians Throw Easy Questions About RBA Gold
Australia’s Gold at the Bank of England

Australia’s Gold at the Bank of England

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 4 Comments

Recently, news network RT.com asked for BullionStar's comments on the question of the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) gold reserves supposedly stored at the Bank of England's gold vaults in London.

Using some of these comments, RT has now published an article on the topic on its English language news website.

Since the full set of RT questions and BullionStar's...
Continue Reading arrow

Who Really Owns Italy’s Gold?

Who Really Owns Italy’s Gold?

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 5 Comments

Italy claims to be the third largest sovereign gold holder in the world, with more than 2450 tonnes of monetary gold holdings.

As populist political parties in Italy come to the fore, the question of whether to harness some of Italy's gold through gold sales has recently been raised.

But who actually owns the Italian gold? Italy's central bank, the Bank of Italy, says...
Continue Reading arrow

BoE Tears Up its Gold Custody Contract With Venezuela

BoE Tears Up its Gold Custody Contract With Venezuela

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 51 Comments

It is now an established fact that the Bank of England has been stalling for months in its refusal to allow stored gold to be withdrawn from London by the central bank of Venezuela.

Taking its orders from the UK and US governments, the reputation of the Bank of England as a safe and secure location for the gold bars of the world’s central banks looks now to have been...
Continue Reading arrow

Separating Truth From Fiction in China’s Golden Poker Game
Is Russia's Central Bank Buying Gold on the Int'l Market?

Is Russia's Central Bank Buying Gold on the Int'l Market?

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 11 Comments

The Russian central bank has bought so much gold this year that its purchases now exceed the amount of gold mined in Russia during 2018.

But with a policy of buying domestic gold mining output, the central bank will now need to look further afield to fulfill its gold reserve purchase requirements.

As existing agents of the central bank, the large Russian commercial...
Continue Reading arrow

Venezuela’s Gold in Limbo at the Bank of England

Venezuela’s Gold in Limbo at the Bank of England

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 19 Comments

As one of the world’s largest custodians of central bank gold, the Bank of England is attracting unwanted attention in a bizarre saga involving 14 tonnes of Venezuela’s gold.

A whole cast of colorful characters has recently emerged on both sides, those wanting the gold to be returned and those wanting the gold to be confiscated.
Continue Reading arrow

French Central Bank & JP Morgan to Boost Gold Lending

French Central Bank & JP Morgan to Boost Gold Lending

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 2 Comments

The gold lending market is arguably the most secretive and opaque market in the world with little known about its workings and less about its transactions and outstanding gold lending positions.

While London is the core hub for this secretive market, one of the giants of bullion banking, JP Morgan, has recently confirmed that it is facilitating central bank gold lending in...
Continue Reading arrow

LBMA Trading Volume Confirms London Paper Gold Casino
BoE Refuses to Return 14 Tonnes of Gold to Venezuela
Does Central Bank Gold Buying Impact Demand & Price?

Does Central Bank Gold Buying Impact Demand & Price?

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 2 Comments

Central bank gold demand has hit the headlines recently due to additional central banks announcing gold purchases as well as an overall increase in the amount of gold which these banks as a group claim to be buying.

But it is dangerous for the media and the World Gold Council to group all central bank gold purchases into the same basket, since the motivations of individual...
Continue Reading arrow

Hungary Announces 10-Fold Jump in Gold Reserves

Hungary Announces 10-Fold Jump in Gold Reserves

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 3 Comments

In dramatic news for the gold market, the central bank of Hungary has just announced that it has increased its strategic gold reserves by 10-fold from 3.1 tonnes to 31.5 tonnes. That's a 1000% increase.

Not only that, but the Hungarian central bank has also repatriated all of this newly purchased gold to Hungary, some 28.4 tonnes, signalling the geo-strategic nature of this...
Continue Reading arrow

Skepticism Reigns About Chinese Central Bank Gold Reserves

Skepticism Reigns About Chinese Central Bank Gold Reserves

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 5 Comments

When BullionStar ran a Twitter survey to find out what percentage of people believe the official Chinese claim about its central bank gold holdings, the results showed resounding skepticism about the official data.

The pool garnered 2337 votes and a full 91% of respondents did not believe the official figure. But within the results there were some surprises.

Given...
Continue Reading arrow

LBMA Data Reveal the Absurdity of the London ‘Gold’ Market

LBMA Data Reveal the Absurdity of the London ‘Gold’ Market

  • Date
  • author Ronan Manly
  • Comments 6 Comments

There are relatively tiny quantities of physical gold holdings in LBMA London vaults to underpin the huge amount of 'gold' trading that goes on in the London Gold Market.

On an annualized basis, the equivalent of 1.5 million tonnes of 'gold' are 'traded' in London, however, there have only ever been about 190,000 tonnes of gold mined throughout history.

So what is...
Continue Reading arrow

We use cookies to enhance the user experience and to analyse traffic. Cookies are also used for the purpose of handling our system and services. By using our website, you accept that cookies are used. You can change the usage of cookies in your browser. The usage of cookies and the collection of customer information by BullionStar is guided by our Privacy Policy.