Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Gold swaps undertaken by the Bank for International Settlements fell in August by four tonnes, from 34 in July to 30 at the end of last month, according to the bank's monthly report, published this week --
https://www.bis.org/banking/balsheet/statofacc250831.pdf
-- and to calculations made from the report by GATA consultant Robert Lambourne.
The report implies that the bank was not recruited to intervene much in the gold market in August on behalf of its member central banks and that there continues to be little interest among them in incurring more gold liabilities or in letting their metal get far from home.
The July 1 report from Lambourne --
https://www.gata.org/node/23935
-- provides some history on the gold swap transactions and their volatility since the bank in 2010 made it possible for its swaps to be calculated.
As recently as January 2022, the bank's swaps exceeded 500 tonnes, but they have fallen sharply since, indicating a profound change of policy toward or outlook on gold among central banks, a trend that seems to have correlated with increasing central bank acquisitions and repatriations, along with gold's rising price.
But the BIS swaps remain proof that central banks are still active in the gold market surreptitiously as well as openly, the surreptitious part signifying that central banks prefer to conceal interventions whose disclosure would seriously affect prices or explode their plans to influence prices.
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