The LBMA vault holding data outlined below represent the volume of Loco London gold and silver held in the London vaults offering custodian services. As at 31 March, 2017 there were 7,449 tonnes of gold, valued at $298 billion and 32,078 tonnes of silver valued at $19 billion. This equates to approximately 596,000 gold bars and 1,069,255 silver bars.

The London Metal Exchange (LME) will start publishing gold and silver reference prices, the exchange told Reuters on Tuesday, potentially challenging the dominance of benchmarks administered by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

With the London Gold Market trading unlimited quantities of unallocated gold which the bullion banks create out of thin air, and with COMEX trading gold futures which are also created out of thin air, the disconnect between the world of unlimited paper gold and the world of limited physical gold is becoming ever more stark.

On one side lies paper claims on gold which come into and out of existence through cash-settled market mechanisms. On the other is real physical gold that is segregated, allocated and unencumbered, with full title held by the gold holder. Paper gold ownership is fleeting, speculative and prone to counterparty and conversion risks. Real gold is tangible, has inherent value, has no counterparty risk, and can be securely stored.

The world’s biggest industrial metals exchange is taking on the most powerful players in the gold market with the launch on Monday of its first futures contract for the commodity since the middle of the 1980s.

The London Metal Exchange and its partners aim to grab a piece of the action in a city where almost half the world’s gold changes hands. At stake are rival visions of how best to run the market, pitching the LME, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley on one side and the London Bullion Market Association representing some of the biggest trading firms on the other.

CME lowers gold margins

London's gold benchmark experienced large, unpredictable fluctuations after some banks left the auction that sets the price relied upon by the $5 trillion-a-year bullion market, according to a Reuters analysis of trading data.

The LBMA and the LPMCL are delighted to announce that from summer 2017 the LBMA will be publishing the gold and silver physical precious metals holdings of the London vaults, with the platinum and palladium holdings to be published at a later date.

The data only includes physical metal held within the London environs and does not include precious metals physical holdings readily available at short notice in other secure overseas vaulting facilities.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing will undertake in the third quarter its third attempt to launch a gold futures contract after two previous failures, but traders have mixed views on its chances for success.

HKEX, which operates the local stock and futures markets, on Monday will kick off promotional efforts for a range of workshops and seminar for brokers, investors and media as part of its plan to launch two new gold futures contracts – one in US dollars and one in yuan - with physical delivery.

In a bizarre series of events that have had limited coverage but which are sure to have far-reaching consequences for benchmark pricing in the precious metals markets, the LBMA Gold Price and LBMA Silver Price auctions both experienced embarrassing trading glitches over consecutive trading days on Monday 10 April and Tuesday 11 April. At the outset, its worth remembering that both of these London-based benchmarks are Regulated Benchmarks, regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

In both cases, the trading glitches had real impact on the benchmark prices being derived in the respective auctions, with the auction prices deviating noticeably from the respective spot prices during the auctions. It’s also worth remembering that the LBMA Gold Price and LBMA Silver Price reference prices that are ‘discovered’ each day in the daily auctions are used to value everything from gold-backed and silver-backed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to precious metals interest rate swaps, and are also used widely as reference prices by thousands of precious metals market participants, such as wholesalers, refineries, and bullion retailers, to value their own bi-lateral transactions.