Good, at least we're beginning to agree on the nitty gritty.
1999 figures you gave me:
<624mt (41%) of the gap was filled by scrap
445mt (29.5%) was filled by forward sales
441mt (29.5%) was filled by central bank sales
Adds up to 1510mt (close enough ?)>
Yes, so you agree it's been Central bank sales and leasing that have closed the supply gap, primarily. That's why the POG is such as it is. The scrap dealers just dump the stuff at whatever price they can get; same with the miners, by and large. The discretionary sellers are clearly the CBs and they're leasing the stuff out at 1%.
If I were to rent out widget-A at 1% and someone else is willing to rent widget-B at 5% don't you think intermediaries would tend to rent widget-A, and sell it for widget-B's in order to rent out widget-B's at a higher rate, and wouldn't that tend to decrease the "price" of A with respect to B?
I did my own computation of average jewelry demand rates from your tables. For the last 10 years, 1989 to 1998, average demand is 2665 tons/yr, and the increase in demand is approximately 4.1% per year.
BTW, are all your spreadsheet data from GFMS? When you say your goldhist document represents "best guess" can you tell me how you arrived at the figures and which ones are directly quoted from GFMS, etc.?
Regarding the data, Excel is best. Does anyone have data earlier than 15 years ago? Email to bob_dobbs@hotmail.com
Thanks. |
