Why trying to correlate physical flows with the price can be misleading

• On-going tightness in the physical gold markets
• There is less liquidity in the physical market
• The physical tightness of flow is reflected in the price “not at all”
• As long as the spot market is settled with cash settlement, the physical flows are not determining price
• If investors dealing in cash markets begin to take delivery, the physical is just not around
• The current pricing mechanism can continue indefinitely unless investor behavior changes to taking delivery versus cash settlement
• The gold price has “no correlation to the physical market”
• If this behavior changes (to taking physical delivery) it could become dramatically dangerous
• Gold is moving in one direction from west to east with small exceptions over the last year
• 90% of the refinery’s business is currently supplying demand from the east (India, China) and 10% to western markets
• China has imposed a new standard on the LBMA good delivery system of 1 kilo, 999.9 fineness
• 400oz bars being melted and refined to 1 kilo 999.9 fine bars and shipped into China are coming out of London and particularly the ETF’s such as GLD
• In the next gold upleg, scrap may not be readily available – overall scrap has decreased remarkably
• Declining investment in the mining sector and geo-political issues affecting mining viability will unavoidably reduce gold supply moving forward
• The danger of less supply moving forward is more likely than the comfort of more supply