Gold demand surged to a record this year according to the latest World Gold Council report even as some worry about gold being a so-called “finite” resource that will run out in a few decades. Of course, if price get high enough, I am sure they will find more gold one way or another as recycling and the quest for profits may cause gold miners and gold prospectors to go where no man has gone before. Yet those worries about gold as a precious metal only make the quest to own gold more precious. The phones lighting up positions they still have their second largest net long position since April. The Word Gold Council said that gold demand excluding OTC in Q2 was down 6% y/y to 929 ton as a sharp decline in jeweler consumption outweighed mild gains in all other sectors.Adding OTC investment to total gold demand yields a 4% y/y increase to 1,258t – the highest Q2 in our data series back to 2000.They said that the record gold price environment took its toll on Q2 jewelry consumption: volumes fell 19% y/y to a four-year low of 391 tons.Central bank net gold buying was 6% higher y/y at 184 tons, driven by the need for portfolio protection and diversification. A minor 7 tons decline in global gold ETF holdings in Q2 compared positively with the 21t drop in Q2’23. Sizable early outflows were followed by nascent later inflows.Retail bar and coin investment was 5% lower at 261t, primarily due to weak demand from Western markets. But gold used in technology jumped 11% y/y, as the AI trend continued to drive demand in the sector.That demand is one of the reasons golds has been outperforming. We are also getting support for geopolitical uncertainty raising the desire for alternative investment.Silver has not been as lucky even as it tries to bottom after getting beat up on concerns about demand due to the failing energy transition. Yet historically silver is out of whack with gold.Chris Powell via MoneyMetals.com who reported in Zero Hedge wrote that “In the July 18 edition of Gold Newsletter, editor Zero Hedge and publisher Brien Lundin wrote about the failure of silver prices to keep up with gold prices.“I’m not the kind of conspiracy buff that many of my friends in the industry are,” Lundin wrote, “but it’s hard to look at silver and not see some hidden hands at work (especially considering who holds so much of the metal in both physical and paper forms while acting as custodian for the biggest silver exchange-traded fund).” Of course, Lundin meant investment bank JPMorgan Chase and silver ETF SLV.He Writes “Why anyone would invest in silver or the other precious and monetary metals with JPMorgan Chase can be explained only by ignorance.In the last decade, the bank has pleaded guilty to five felonies and has paid more than a billion dollars in government fines and civil lawsuit settlements, including a fine of $920 million for manipulation of the monetary metals markets by some of its traders.But silver market manipulation long has been bigger than even JPMorgan Chase. Indeed, silver price suppression has been U.S. government policy since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Coinage Act of 1965, which removed silver from the country’s money. “If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content”: a must-read.Outtake is that while silver will be volatile it has limited downside as gold will keep us from falling too far. Risng geopolitical risk should support both silver and gold.There is the possibility of a civil war in Venezuela. People are uprising in the streets as they feel them Venezuelan President t Nicolás Maduro tole the election, Bloomberg News reported that(erg) — Venezuela’s opposition can prove that Edmundo González won Sunday’s election, according to María Corina Machado, who led the campaign against President NicolásMaduro. She told supporters at her party’s campaign headquarters on Monday evening that the opposition has enough of the “actas,” or voting tabulations to prove they won the election. Last night, they had access to about 40% of them, now they say they have over 70%. The figures show a categoric and “irreversible” triumph: 6.2 million votes for González compared to 2.8 million.Copper Is failing to bet a bid as weak Asian stock markets are weighing on the market.I expect if the economic data in the United States is positive copper should find a bottom soon.Th the increasing odds of a cut in interest rates should spur the housing markets and home building.That should be a supportive factor for copper. Expectations that China will continue to support their economy should keep the copper market from falling too much further its markets getting extremely oversold and the outlook for the copper shortage in the years ahead hasn’t gone away.More By This Author:The Energy Report: Weakness In Different Forms
Democracy And Oil. The Energy Report, July 29, 2024
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