Bullion Star market analyst Ronan Manly, long a close observer of the London Bullion Market Association, writes today that the association's pledge Monday --
http://gata.org/node/18577
-- to increase transparency in the London gold market is phony because the data to be published will consist mainly of a five-day average of trades and will exclude trades by parties that are not LBMA members.
Manly writes: "There is nothing transparent about this initiative. A rolled-up aggregate number of trading volumes in any market is by definition opaque and not very useful. The LBMA reporting will provide no granularity of trades by trade type, transaction type, client profile (ETF trades, central bank trades, miner trades, and refiner trades), no breakdown of physical gold trades vs. paper gold trades, and no information on the secretive central bank gold trades, gold loans, and gold swaps.
"Given that the London precious metals market trade data is now being collected in an LBMA database, all of the above granular trade data could be published. That the LBMA will not publish any of this data speaks volumes about its true intention, which is to continually stifle the availability of any real data about the London gold and silver markets."
Manly's commentary is headlined "LBMA's New Trade Volume Data Will Do Nothing for the Transparency of the London Gold Market" and it's posted at Bullion Star here:
https://www.bullionstar.com/editorialarchive
