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8 results for “central bank reserves” in Markets
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
…y. · Repatriation is driven less by distrust of custodians than by the demonstration that reserves can be immobilised. · Bringing gold home imposes real costs: vault construction, insurance, audit and lost liquidity. · The trend interacts with sustained official-sector buying, ti…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
…by emerging-market reserve managers rebuilding a domestically held, unencumbered share of reserves. · Gold's appeal to a reserve manager is that it carries no counterparty: it cannot be frozen by the issuer of another country's liability. · Central banks are price-insensitive, sl…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
Markets · 11 September 2026
The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold
…nsisted largely of checking that compartment seals are unbroken. · Foreign custody at the Bank of England and the New York Fed is normal and practical, but it substitutes a custodian's attestation for physical inspection by the owner. · Germany's repatriation programme, completed…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Markets · 18 August 2026
The Vault Beneath the City
Beneath the Bank of England and beneath lower Manhattan sit two of the largest concentrations of monetary gold on earth, moved between anonymous compartments by a handful of porters who never touch the…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Markets · 8 September 2026
The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do
…as the dominant driver? No single variable. The best-supported account combines sustained central-bank purchases, reserve managers reassessing the safety of foreign-currency claims, and steady physical demand in India, China and the Gulf that does not respond to Western real-yiel…
Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
…Shanghai, Mumbai and Istanbul are logistics and policy signals, not arbitrage failures. · Central banks and ETF flows move the price in opposite directions on different clocks: reserves are slow and price-insensitive, funds are fast and price-chasing. · Lease rates and the gold f…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Markets · 17 August 2026
Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars
…ounts are the plumbing of the wholesale market and are, in law, an unsecured claim on the bank rather than ownership of metal. · Fewer than two per cent of COMEX gold futures contracts typically go to delivery; the contract is a price instrument first and a delivery mechanism sec…
Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
…y means specific numbered bars belong to you; unallocated means you are a creditor of the bank, and the difference only becomes visible in a crisis. · A bar's value depends on an unbroken custody record; once it leaves the accredited chain it must usually be re-refined before it…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
