This new article for the LBMA puts private investors front & center for gold analysts...

The FIGURE of the private investor – the dreaded goldbug – looms large in how the Western world sees the gold market, writes Adrian Ash at BullionVault.

Yet to date, however, anecdote has had to suffice for analysts wanting to judge this participant's role in the ebb and flow of prices. Because while private individuals are perhaps overrepresented in the popular view of gold investing (not to say misrepresented), they are little examined in the data.

BullionVault's Gold Investor Index sets out to start filling that gap. Based solely on data from its own peer-to-peer gold exchange online, the Index measures whether more people are buying, selling, or sitting on their hands each month.

But how does it work, and what does it show? To help explain the Gold Investor Index to our professional colleagues in the wholesale market, myself and economist Ben Traynor recently wrote a detailed article for the London Bullion Market Association's quarterly magazine, The Alchemist.

It's available to non-members for free online. You can download and read the 3-page article Fear, Delusion & the Gold Investor Index here.