China’s Demand For Physical Quadruples Gold Premium

The premium that gold buyers in China pay to take immediate delivery of bullion has jumped four-fold in the last six weeks following the gold price ‘crash’. As Bloomberg notes, even before the mid-April drop, China’s gold imports jumped to a record in the first quarter as domestic demand (776 tons) outweighed domestic supply (403 tons). Images of consumers overwhelming jewelry shops were everywhere but the following chart clarifies just what the suspected gold manipulation did for demand as China’s gold premium, while admittedly noisy, jumped from a long-run average of around $7 to over $32! As one analyst notes, the gold “premium is a function of demand and supply, and right now you could interpret the high premium in Shanghai as a sweetener to entice the overseas gold supply to flow into China.”

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