Wednesday, July 21, 2010

"Is someone liquidating GLD?" (GLD; IAU)

The ETF is up 7 cents at $116.72.
From FT Alphaville:
In the old(er) days, it was generally said that gold traded in an inverse relationship with the dollar and also, to a lesser extent, other risky assets.
Yet, gold sold off sharply in June:

But the S&P 500 also saw a fall:

And the dollar has also been declining:

Which might be a tad confusing.
So what’s really behind the gold move?
Well, according to Reuters one particular equitised gold product is experiencing rather sharpish outflows in holdings. That would, of course, be the SPDR GLD exchange traded fund (ETF).
As the newswire reported on Tuesday:
The world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Trust said its holdings fell nearly 0.5 percent to 1,308.128 tonnes by July 20 from 1,314.211 on July 15. The holdings hit a record at 1,320.436 tonnes on June 29.
To see how that ties with the gold price one would have to chart GLD’s historical assets under management or shares outstanding. Unfortunately, the GLD SPDR goldshares’s website doesn’t offer archived data on this, only the last noted assessment.
So we’ve done the next best thing....MORE