By John Dizard
Financial Times, London
Friday, October 25, 2013
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/445c613a-2ce4-11e3-8281-00144feab7de.html
Something is unsettling
the animals in the forest of the gold market. Usually there is a chorus of
chirrups and squeaks that are significant, momentarily, for one species or
another, such as a few cents of arbitrage between Zurich and London, or a
dollar-an-ounce rise in India caused by a dealer's near insolvency. Then the
noise settles down to the murmur of wind through the trees
However, the continuing
high level of premiums for physical gold over the kinds you can trade on a
screen suggests that the next move in the major gold indices or the various
exchange traded funds could be discontinuous and dramatic. It would be much
better for the financial world if gold were just bumping along, with only
enough volatility and liquidity to keep a few dealers' lights on. That would
mean electronic or paper assets have retained their essential credibility
with the public.
The "gold price" found in a box on the homepage, has, after
bouncing off its June lows of around $1,150, had a depressed September and
has begun to move up again, to Friday's level of about $1,300.
Much more interesting is
that Indians are willing to pay about $270 above the world market price, when
you add the "ex-duty premium" to the recently increased 10.3 per
cent import duty. There is, of course, a black market price for those who are
willing to take a chance with the Indian revenue that is a bit lower. The
government wants to discourage "non-essential" imports such as
gold, through levers such as taxation and restrictions on credit for gold
dealing.
The Chinese government
has no anti-gold retail purchases policy. There are no issues with importing,
refining and fabricating, or distributing gold. Yet there is a Shanghai
market premium that last week was fluctuating from a little under $7/ounce to
a bit over. That is actually a lot of money for a location arbitrage. As my
old boss at Mocatta told me: "If you do this right, it's a
nickel-and-dime business." Well, maybe a $2 or $3 business.
John Brimelow, a gold
analyst who has been deconstructing the Indian premiums for many years, says:
"There was a collapse of Indian premiums in early August that was due to
the collapse of the rupee and the rise in duty to the current level. The
current 20 per cent premium has not been seen since gold import was made
legal in 1990."
A third strange cry in
the forest is the "negative gofo," or gold forward lease rates that
effectively pay a higher gold price over the next three months than in the
future. This "backwardation" is a common enough phenomenon for
other commodities in short physical supply, but, given the much greater
weight of above-ground supplies in the gold market, is supposed to be a
nonexistent or fleeting occurrence for the metal. Yet the negative gofo, at
least for 400-oz good delivery London bullion bars, has persisted for weeks.
As one of my gold refiner
friends puts it: "The negative gofo is just a shortage of kilo bars. It
is, technically, a backwardation, but I call it the convenience yield of
having gold immediately available for physical delivery. Look at the huge
premiums in the Shanghai exchange and in India. You think maybe the market
will normalise and the premium will disappear soon. So you pay up for
immediate delivery."
The 400-oz bars, though,
are the only acceptable form of backing for gold exchange-traded funds, not
to mention the London market. There is a shrinking supply, which has been
gradually flown from London to Switzerland, where the bars are further
refined, cast into kilos, and sent on to China, India, the Middle East, and
elsewhere.
Say, what if there is a
rise in the world gold price that leads to an increase in demand for gold
ETFs and exchange-traded futures? Could the gold flow back from those kilo
bars to recasting as good delivery 400-oz bars?
Not easy, my refiner
says: "Much of that has been converted to jewellery. It would be a
lengthy process. Those are pretty sticky hands."
He continues: "This
could turn into a very violent wake-up for (screen-traded gold). People talk
about 'fiat currencies,' but we also have fiat gold. Volatility is too cheap
right now."
Taken together, this
collection of persistent microeconomic signals in gold could flag macro
trouble to come. These noises worried me in August. They worry me more now.
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