Why IMF may not sell 191 tonnes of gold
( สรุปภาษาไทยอยู่ด้านล่างครับ )
( สรุปภาษาไทยอยู่ด้านล่างครับ )
By David Lew
The global gold market turned into an upbeat mood two months back when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it would be selling an additional 191 tonnes of gold in the open market.
In November last year, India bought 200 tonnes of gold from IMF. The India gold buy from IMF turned historic as gold price zoomed to touch $1227 per ounce in the wake of frantic trading by bullion dealers across the world. Bullion analysts and gold enthusiasts predicted then that gold price would boom to $2,000 per ounce soon.
But gold price only has come down since then. Everyone thought that IMF decision to sell the remaining 191 tonnes of gold from its vault would result in a gold price surge. But these days there is no news on IMF selling the promised gold and several bullion analysts are asking what is happening to the IMF gold sale.
Was the latest IMF gold sale announcement just a ploy to ensure that gold price does not plunge further? Was the gold sale plan a tactic to suppress the price of gold? Who is benefiting out of the IMF gold sale plan? Speculators and manipulators?
In fact, a bullion expert is of the opinion that IMF is not going to sell gold. Patrick A. Heller who owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Michigan says that the IMF gold sale announcement was only a tactic meant to help the US government suppress the price of gold.
Here is the interesting article from Patrick on why he thinks that IMF is not going to sell the promised 191 tonnes of gold.
By Patrick A. Heller
As I have explained several times, the multi-year publicity over the possibility that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might sell of part of its gold reserves was really only a tactic meant to help the US government suppress the price of gold.
Early on, the mere threat that the IMF was considering a possible release of gold reserves was successful in driving down the price of gold at least 10%, where it typically took at least three months to recover. The pretext given for such sales changed over time, but always involved unloading about 400 tons (12.9 million ounces) of gold. Until last year, the potential IMF sales never materialized.
By 2009, demand for physical gold was so strong that the threat of a possible IMF gold sale no longer had much impact on prices. Gold’s price would drop only 1-2% and then recover within a few days. To try to have a larger impact, the IMF was forced to actually commit to selling gold instead of just talking about it.
However, even the actual sale of gold could not overcome growing demand. China not only stated that it was willing to purchase the entire lot of gold the IMF was putting up for sale (403 tons or 13 million ounces), but it was ready to pay cash to acquire all of the IMF gold reserves of more than 100 million ounces!
What ended up happening is that the central banks of India, Sri Lanka, and Mauritius purchased just over half the IMF gold in “off-market” transactions. The bulk of these sales went to India, one of four nations that is supposedly the custodian of the IMF gold reserves. There is significant suspicion that this particular sale may have been done to replace prior secret sales of gold intended to help suppress gold prices. It is possible that the gold sale to India’s central bank may have been settled by bookkeeping entries rather than the actual transfer of physical gold.
Since these gold sales to central banks did not have the desired effect of knocking down prices, the IMF suspended further sales. Six weeks ago, the IMF announced that it planned to sell the remaining 191.3 tons (6.15 million ounces) of its gold to “the market.” By trying to make it appear that this amount of physical gold might actually be sold to “retail” buyers, the hope of the US government and the IMF was that the price of gold would decline.
This announcement did not produce enough of an effect at knocking down gold prices. Within 24 hours, the price of gold sank as much as $24, just over 2%, and then almost completely recovered.
In this announcement, the IMF did anticipate that some of the gold might be sold to central banks. At the time, I predicted that little if any of this gold would actually be sold to the general public.
My prediction appears to have been accurate. Last week, Sprott Asset Management of Toronto announced that they had contacted the IMF to try to purchase the entire remaining amount of IMF gold supposedly for sale.
Sprott received $400 million from investors from its initial public offering on February 26 for Sprott Physical Gold Trust (symbol PHYS), the beginning of what is expected to be a much larger fund. This closed-end mutual fund used the proceeds of the stock sale to purchase a large quantity of 400-ounce London Good Delivery gold bars for storage at the Royal Canadian Mint.
This Sprott fund will own specific gold bars, not paper gold. Owners of sufficient shares have the option of turning in their shares and taking delivery of the physical gold bars, with current delivery costs running about 6% of the value of the gold content. As Sprott prepares to sell its next round of shares, it obviously needs to acquire large quantities of physical gold from somewhere. The IMF gold for sale would be a perfect fit as some of it could be allocated to the Sprott Physical Gold Trust and the balance to other Sprott funds.
However, such a sale of IMF gold would not offer the US government or the IMF the opportunity to push down the price of gold. In fact, such a sale would almost certainly emphasize just how strong physical demand really is—with the result that the price of gold could rise! So, it is no surprise to me that the IMF flatly turned down the prospect of selling gold to Sprott.
Another reason why the IMF may be so reluctant to sell physical gold to the public is that its “holdings” appear to have been double counted (required by former IMF regulations) as part of the respective nation’s gold reserves. Should the IMF actually sell gold to the public, that may expose this double counting of gold reserves.
The IMF’s refusal to actually sell gold that it claims it has for sale, when coupled with the evidence of gold and silver price manipulation entered in the official record as part of last week’s hearings by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, could end up providing a boost for precious metals prices. I had earlier predicted that the price of gold would surpass its early December 2009 record by the end of March 2010. It doesn’t look like that will happen by tomorrow’s close. However, market signals point to a new record high in the very near future. I think my forecast will soon prove right on the direction, though slightly off on the timing.
ทำไมไอเอ็มเอฟอาจจะไม่ขายทองคำ 191.3 ตัน
ผมจะสรุปบทวิเคราะห์ข้างต้นสั้นๆ ดังนี้ครับ
- ทองคำของไอเอ็มเอฟ เป็นอีกเครื่องมือหนึ่งของรัฐบาลสหรัฐที่ใช้ในการทุบราคาทองคำในตลาดโลก
- ทุกครั้งที่มีความเคลื่อนไหวในเรื่องนี้จากไอเอ็มเอฟ เกี่ยวกับทองส่วนที่เหลือ การให้สัมภาษณ์จะไปในลักษณะทำให้ราคาทองคำร่วงลง ล่าสุดจากการประกาศว่า "อาจจะต้อง" ขายทองคำส่วนที่เหลือ 191.30 ตัน สู่ Open Market หรือตลาดค้าปลีก ส่งให้ราคาทองร่วงลง $24 เหรียญภายใน 24 ชั่วโมง ซึ่งถือว่าเค้าทำสำเร็จในระดับหนึ่ง แต่ราคาทองคำขึ้นกลับคืนภายใน 2-3 วันหลังจากนั้น
-Patrick A. Heller CEO ของ Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Michigan กล่าวว่าการประกาศขายทองคำบางส่วนของไอเอ็มเอฟ เป็นเพียงเทคนิคเพื่อช่วยรัฐบาลสหรัีฐกดราคาทองคำไว้เท่านั้นเอง แต่ผิดแผนครับ เพราะการปิดดีลและประกาศขายให้อินเดีย ศรีลังกา และมอริเชียสในรอบที่แล้วกลับทำให้ราคาทองคำพุ่งทะลุระดับ $1,000 ขึ้นไปอยู่ที่ $1,227 ต่อออนซ์ในเวลาต่อมา
-ล่าสุดกองทุน Sprott Asset Management of Toronto ได้รวบรวมเงินทุน $400,000,000 เพื่อเสนอซื้อทองคำส่วนที่เหลือจากไอเอ็มเอฟ แต่กลับได้รับการปฏิเสธครับ ซึ่งคงจะเป็นการดึงเกมส์ เพราะไอเอ็มเอฟคงจะคำนวณแล้วว่า หากมีการปิดดีลและตกลงทำการขายทองคำส่วนที่เหลือ ก็จะทำให้ราคาทองคำในตลาดพุ่งสูงขึ้นอีก เพราะฉะนั้นจึงมีการปฏิเสธการขายออกมา
-Patrick Heller จึงกล่าวว่ายากที่จะมีการการขายหรือประกาศการขายของทองคำล๊อตนี้ออกมาครับ
-ยิ่งถ้าเราดูปริมาณสัญญาช๊อตของกลุ่มขาใหญ่ที่เค้าเปิดไว้แล้ว การควบคุมราคาทองคำจะต้องเข้มข้นขึ้น ไม่สามารถปล่อยให้ราคาทองคำ "หลุด" จากการควบคุมได้เลยครับ 
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น