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20 results for “loco London”
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 lives. · The headline gold price…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
…and during the Cold War it was safer outside the likely path of an invasion. · What does 'loco London' mean? It designates gold held in accredited London vaults, the default location for wholesale settlement. A loco London price is a price for metal deliverable there, which is wh…
Ingrid Sørensen · 13 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
…ar of manufacture. · That set of marks is what allows a bar to move between vaults in the loco London system without being re-assayed at every transfer. Accreditation is not permanent; refiners submit to periodic proficiency testing and can be suspended. The list of accredited re…
Tomas Herrera · 12 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
…ehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can diverge from a bar in New York. · Allocated custody means specific numbered bars belong to you; unallocated means you are a creditor of the bank, and the difference only becomes v…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
…stalls on rallies, the inverse of investment flows. · Local premiums and discounts to the London price are the clearest real-time read on Asian physical appetite. · Import duty and hallmarking rules move demand between the formal and informal trade more than they move total consu…
Yusuf Demir · 16 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
…andard but the metal, and a set of habits built around it. Gold is priced continuously in London and traded around the clock. It is held by states that trust each other imperfectly, by households in South Asia who have watched local currencies fail within living memory, and by fu…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
…oduction offtake — the mine sells to the central bank rather than exporting, often at the London benchmark less a small discount. Over-the-counter accumulation — small, irregular tranches through bullion banks, deliberately sized not to move the fix. Official-sector transfers — d…
Ingrid Sørensen · 17 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
Every ounce of mined gold leaves behind roughly a tonne of processed rock and the water that carried it. What happens to that material after the last shift is the part of the industry with the longest…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
A gold mine is not a hole with gold in it. It is a spreadsheet with a hole attached — and the single number that decides which rock is ore and which rock is waste moves every time the price does. · Mo…
Amara Okonjo · 16 min read
Craft · 22 July 2026
Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold
A hallmark is one of the oldest consumer protection technologies in continuous use. It is also, on close inspection, a small masterpiece of institutional design — and it is being quietly eroded. · A h…
Yusuf Demir · 12 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments. ·…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irreplaceable. ·…
Yusuf Demir · 11 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
Industrial demand is the quietest third of the gold market: a few tenths of a gram per handset, multiplied by billions of devices, chosen not for prestige but because nothing else conducts as reliably…
Tomas Herrera · 15 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
A field of gold torcs and coins is a spectacular find and a treacherous document. The people who buried it were not writing to us, and the reasons they had for putting it in the ground are exactly wha…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
Divide gold finely enough and it stops being gold-coloured, stops being inert in the way you expect, and starts doing work in places no bullion bar could reach — including the test strip that told you…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone, too soft to hold an edge, and the wrong colour for half the world's taste. Almost everything you own that is gold is a designed alloy — and the design is where t…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
A significant share of the world's gold is produced by people working with hand tools, informal finance and a neurotoxin. Formalisation is the stated solution. Nobody agrees on what it costs. · Artisa…
Amara Okonjo · 12 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
A tonne of good underground ore holds a few grams of gold. A tonne of discarded circuit boards can hold two hundred. So why is most of it still going into landfill? · Concentration, not tonnage, is wh…
Tomas Herrera · 13 min read
Science · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none o…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
