Bar and coin demand jumped 28% to 298.1t as retail investors took advantage of the lower gold price and sought protection against currency weakness and tumbling stock markets. Jewellery demand rose 6% in Q3 as lower prices caught consumers’ attention. A growing number of central bank buyers saw demand in this sector rise 22% y-o-y to 148.4t, the highest level of quarterly net purchases since 2015. Technology registered its eighth consecutive quarter of y-o-y growth, up 1%. Sharp outflows in gold-backed ETFs offset growth across much of the gold market.
WORLD GOLD COUNCIL:
https://www.gold.org/research/gold-demand-trends/gold-demand-trends-q3-2018
Comment: Plenty to read on the link. Sounds like the paper buyers bailing out caused outflows, but lower prices finally attracted physical buyers. They should have NEVER created those artificial paper markets. They make it too easy for people to make believe they bought something, and too easy to sell something they don’t even have. Its like short selling.
Meanwhile the managers of those ETFs, have to do the physical loading and unloading for all the willy nilly instant buy and sell orders. Normally, physical buyers buy and hold for safety and long term. Who in their right mind would go in and out, buy and sell physical? So, in a sense the managers of ETFs are trading in and out physical. Its all dumb. I suspect the ETS cause the extreme highs and lows.