Gold News

Gold Price Volatility Has Jumped – And How!

The Gold Price has suddenly become extremely volatile – as these three charts show...

A YEAR OR SO BACK, the Gold Price was quietly making new record highs above $1300 and then $1400 per ounce. It was also so placid that volatility in its daily swings hit the lowest level in half-a-decade, writes Adrian Ash here at BullionVault.

This was hardly the stuff of a mania. And it only made Buying Gold a simpler decision for new and existing investors, especially those borrowing money to do it on the derivatives market. Whereas this summer's surge to (and sharp drop from) $1920 an ounce has already thrown a fat chunk of "hot money" out of the trade.

As you can see, leveraged speculators are fleeing the gold futures and options market at the fastest pace since Lehman Brothers blew up in Sept. 2008. Already shrinking by 40% since the new record peak of start-August, their "net long" betting on the Gold Price (simply the number of bullish minus bearish contracts) has crashed to barely 600 tonnes equivalent – the smallest level since mid-2009, and a level first reached at the tail-end of 2005.

Now, whichever came first – chicken or egg, price drop or hot-money flight – the end result so far this autumn is a jump in price volatility last seen at (you guessed it) Lehman Brothers' collapse.

"Key characteristics of a safe-haven asset are low price volatility and minimal risk of

capital loss," notes the latest Commodities Weekly from French investment bank and bullion dealer Natixis.

"With Gold Price volatility doubling, and Gold Prices dropping by more than 10% in just three days [last week], these characteristics no longer apply to gold."

But this loss of what was apparently gold's "safe haven" status hasn't diminished demand. Quite the contrary in fact for physical gold buyers, both in Europe and the US but more critically in the world's No.2 consumer – and fastest-growing source of demand – China.

Reports from bullion bank and secure logistics contacts all point to a surge in gold buying from Asia, with large 400-ounce bars being sucked out of London for turning into kilo-bars in Switzerland to be shipped onto China. Price volatility still applies, however. With bells on. 

If you've struggled over the last month with gold's new volatility, then pity buyers and sellers on the Shanghai Gold Exchange. Violence in the domestic Chinese Gold Price has been worse by one fifth than in US Dollar prices on the London Fix – still the global benchmark price almost 100 years after the end of Great Britain's imperial gold standard.

That's because London is still central clearing for the vast bulk of the world's gold, where it sits ready for shipping wherever else it will find a use. Increasingly, that somewhere else is China, even though it's now the world's No.1 mining producer each year. Chinese refineries lead new applications to produce London Good Delivery bars, the 400-ounce wholesale standard worldwide. Yet no Chinese-made bars should (as yet) have reached London's Good Delivery bullion vaults, despite their producers devoting themselves to gaining LGD accreditation. Because China's borders are closed to exports of gold.

This one-way traffic – into China – helped last year to plug the 360-tonne gap between China's world-beating mine output and it's galloping demand for gold. The huge volatility in Shanghai premiums over London gold is of course a function of the metal's underlying volatility. But it's clearly being extended by the logistical bottlenecks and delays that are guaranteed to hit this very physical trade, now trying to ship ever-more Gold Bullion from the other side of the world.

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Adrian Ash

Adrian Ash, BullionVault Gold News

Adrian Ash is director of research at BullionVault, the world-leading physical gold, silver and platinum market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and he has now been researching and writing daily analysis of precious metals and the wider financial markets for over 20 years. A frequent guest on BBC radio and television, Adrian is regularly quoted by the Financial Times, MarketWatch and many other respected news outlets, and his views from inside the bullion market have been sought by the Economist magazine, CNBC, Bloomberg, Germany's Handelsblatt and FAZ, plus Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore.

See the full archive of Adrian Ash articles on GoldNews.

Please Note: All articles published here are to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it. Please review our Terms & Conditions for accessing Gold News.

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