The January statement of account for the Bank for International Settlements was published this week --
https://www.bis.org/banking/balsheet/statofacc240131.pdf
-- and allows an estimate to be made of the volume of gold swaps undertaken by the BIS at the month end: 117 tonnes, a 4-tonne reduction from the swaps volume as of the end of December.
Hence January appears to have been a quiet month in BIS gold swaps. Four tonnes is one of the smallest changes uncovered since GATA commenced its review of these transactions in 2018.
A more detailed report on the use of gold swaps by the BIS was published last week to cover transactions in December 2023:
https://www.gata.org/node/23016
That report and previous ones said that these swaps are undertaken by the BIS or one or more of their central bank customers, with the swapped gold being accounted for as being held in a BIS-registered sight account at a central bank.
Given what is happening in the gold market more generally, it appears reasonable to assume that the Federal Reserve is the BIS' customer for these gold transactions and they are used to facilitate surreptitious intervention in the gold market, most likely for price suppression.
About the author
