From the world’s largest gold ETF, 397 million U.S. dollars in investor funds were again withdrawn last week.
Gold price recovers
The gold price recovered from the recent rather weak trading days. The fine ounce of gold on the spot market in Europe costed 1,847 U.S. dollars yesterday afternoon. That corresponded to 1,519 euros. In both cases, the gold price was about 1 percent above the previous day. In contrast, the silver price was up 2.3 percent at 24.38 U.S. dollars (20.04 euros).
Largest gold ETF
Last week, investors again withdrew capital from the world’s largest gold ETF, the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD). In the process, the ETF’s reported gold holdings fell 0.7 percent, or 8.46 tons, to 1,171.32 tons. Consequently, net outflows totaled $397.82 million. Each GLD share is officially backed by one-tenth of an ounce of gold.
SLV Silver Fund
The largest silver fund, iShares Silver Trust (SLV), also reported a decline in metal inventory. At last count, the inventory includes 17,044.09 tons. Thus, it was 8.67 tons less than the previous week. In this ETF, fund operators must deposit 1 ounce of silver in bullion form for each share in the security. The previous record stocks were reached in mid-November with 17,671 tons. By comparison, about 26,500 tons (about 855 million ounces in 2018) of silver are mined from the earth worldwide each year.
Background
Both funds deliver physical precious metal only in exceptional cases, such as to major customers. In recent months, however, these exchange traded funds have been the preferred investment instrument of new U.S. investors to speculate with precious metal derivatives via modern platforms such as Robinhood, E-Trade or Public (Goldreporter reported). Their trend-oriented buying behavior has always influenced the gold price in the short term, most recently certainly in a negative sense.
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„Each GLD share is officially backed by one-tenth of an ounce of gold.“
Can you provide any verifiable evidence to support this gold backed claim? How reliable are GLD’s holding reports? GLD does not give retail investors the right to redeem for any of its mystery physical gold holdings. This fact alone ensures the GLD shares to be nothing more than paper at the end of the day. GLD also has a glaring audit loophole in their prospectus that states they have no right to audit subcustodial gold holdings. To this day, I have not heard of a single good reason for the existence of this backdoor to the fund. Some other red flags I’ve stumbled upon, verified and welcome everyone else to verify for themselves:
„Did anyone try calling the GLD hotline at 866 320 4053 in search of numerical details on GLD’s insurance? The prospectus vaguely states „The Custodian maintains insurance with regard to its business on such terms and conditions as it considers appropriate which does not cover the full amount of gold held in custody.“ When I asked about how much of the gold was insured, the representative proceeded to act as if he didn’t know and said they were just the „marketing agent“ for GLD. What kind of marketing agent would not know such basic information about a product they are marketing? It seems like they are deliberately hiding information from investors.“
„I remember there was a highly publicized visit by CNBC’s Bob Pisani to GLD’s gold vault. This visit was organized by GLD’s management to prove the existence of GLD’s gold but the gold bar held up by Mr. Pisani had the serial number ZJ6752 which did not appear on the most recent bar list at that time. It was later discovered that this „GLD“ bar was actually owned by ETF Securities.“