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8 results for “Fineness” in Markets
Markets · 11 September 2026
The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold
…York and Paris to Frankfurt, melting and recasting every returned bar to check weight and fineness. The exercise was completed ahead of schedule and is the closest thing to a full external audit any large holder has conducted and described publicly. · Does the audit gap affect th…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
…· The London market clears in 400-ounce bars of variable weight, refined to a minimum 995 fineness. Comex futures deliver against 100-ounce bars and kilobars. Most Asian markets, and the retail demand behind them, want kilobars at 9999 fineness. These are not interchangeable obje…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Markets · 18 August 2026
The Vault Beneath the City
…armarking. An earmarked bar is identified by a unique serial number, a refiner's stamp, a fineness assay and a weight, and it is allocated in the vault's records to one specific owner. It sits physically in a caged compartment assigned to that owner, stacked on wooden pallets in…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
…able to routine in about a decade. · ~12.4 kg Weight of a Good Delivery bar 995.0 Minimum fineness for Good Delivery 400 oz Nominal bar size, wholesale market Nobody's liability Gold's defining reserve property · The costs nobody advertises · Repatriation is not free, and the bil…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
Markets · 17 August 2026
Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars
…An unallocated balance is a bank's promise to deliver a stated quantity of gold of stated fineness. It is not a bailment. The metal backing that promise is not segregated, not numbered, and not necessarily sitting still — the bank may lease it, use it to settle other obligations,…
Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
…t the metal moving. Refining and upgrading — converting existing holdings of older, lower-fineness bars into current Good Delivery specification so they are tradeable without assay disputes. · Why the reported numbers lag Official reserve statistics are self-reported, published w…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
Markets · 8 September 2026
The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do
For two decades the gold price could be read off an inflation-linked bond screen. Then, somewhere after 2022, the relationship stopped behaving — and the argument about why has become the most consequ…
Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
There is no single gold price. There is a London settlement number, a New York futures curve, a Shanghai premium and a jeweller's counter in Dubai — and the distance between them is where the market l…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
