by John Rubino, John Rubino’s Substack:

When sales are actually purchases

Central banks have morphed recently from net sellers of gold to increasingly aggressive net buyers. And the buying is even more aggressive than it seems. Here’s the story in three charts:

When the global financial system nearly imploded in 2008, central banks stopped selling gold and started buying. To put this buying into context, the world’s mines produce about 3,000 tonnes of gold per year. So 800 tonnes of annual central bank buying, which happened five years out of the past ten, is a significant number.