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ShareMumbai: Given that this was such a simple news story -- with nothing especially surprising about it -- my first inclination was that it did not merit a commentary on the subject. However, seeing the reaction to this news convinced me that my first inclination was wrong.
Reading several reports on this news item, the "analysis" is remarkably the same: India's purchase is a "surprise" because everyone expected China to grab the first share of this gold, but this "removes some anxiety" from the gold market which the IMF's long-promised sale supposedly caused.
Addressing these two themes in order, certainly most knowledgeable commentators in the precious metals sector fully expected China and India to buy all of the 403 tons, which the IMF has been authorised to sell. Those with reasonable memories will recall that China and India jointly called for the IMF to sell all of its thousands of tons of gold only a few months earlier. Obviously, with the IMF selling only a small fraction of their gold, China and India would be expected to be jointly standing at the front of the line-up to buy the IMF's gold.
Whether the IMF announced a sale of gold to China and then India, or India and then China, or both together, there are no "surprises" here. Indeed, the real "surprise" is the claim by the writers of these various news items that the proposed IMF sale has caused "anxiety" in the gold market. What anxiety?
When two of the world's new economic powerhouses make it clear that they covet the thousands of tons of gold being held by the IMF, there was never a possibility (as claimed by one writer after another) that this gold would be sold "in the open market". Indeed, the "voice of reason" through this long, drawn-out farce has been gold-sector icon, Jim Sinclair.
If Sinclair was not the first to scoff at the potential impact of an IMF sale of gold, he was certainly the loudest. He pointed out that in the past, such official sales of gold have tended to be gold-bullish -- because when such gold was rapidly absorbed by the market, and where that same market demonstrated that its appetite for gold had not even begun to be sated, that this reinforces the bullish sentiment in this sector.
Indeed, the only people who expected (or at least hoped) that the paltry sale of 400 tons of gold would "depress" the gold market, or at least cause genuine "anxiety" are the anti-gold cabal. With respect to this group of hardly-unbiased observers, we can observe their own sentiments by reading the words of their "mouthpiece": Kitco's Jon Nadler.
It utterly mystifies me why anyone interested in the precious metals sector would listen to a word of the disinformation on the gold market from this sleazy snake. Consider this: Nadler has worked for a precious metals website, during a decade in which the price of gold has nearly quadrupled -- and yet Nadler, himself, virtually never thinks that "now" is a good time to buy gold.
True to form, Nadler desperately tried to twist the sale of IMF gold to India in a manner which was designed to try to generate some "anxiety" in the gold sector about this non-event. Nadler referred to the sale of gold to India as "removing one cloud" which supposedly hung over the gold market. In fact, as someone who writes about this sector on a full-time basis (and thus is regularly exposed to the daily news in the market), Nadler's remarks demonstrate his complete lack of sincerity.
In the real world, the anti-gold cabal has been trying to depress the gold market for a year with the proposed sale of gold by the IMF. Long before the IMF even had approval to sell this gold, the anti-gold manipulators were "announcing" and "re-announcing" this sale roughly every six weeks to two months. With the exception of last autumn, when the Wall Street-engineered "crash" of global markets took everything down, this proposed sale of gold by the IMF has had no relevance at all to the gold market.
As I wrote back in July, in "Two Short-Term Scenarios for the Gold Market", during gold's traditional "seasonal weakness" from May through the summer, the gold market completely shrugged-off the IMF non-event -- despite the increase to weekly sound-bites about this sale, which the anti-gold cabal continuously fed into the market during this period to try to depress sentiment.
The manipulators were totally unable to push the price of gold lower during this period, despite the fact that India (typically the world's largest importer of gold) had virtually stopped its gold-buying for most of the year. Indeed, the one thing which was totally obvious in this sector, after countless "announcements" of this IMF sale is that selling this gold would have no impact on the gold market (at least, no negative impact).
Most likely, most of the people writing these "news" pieces today were simply fishing for some "angle" to fill up space - and turn this trivial announcement into a "news story". Obviously, such an excuse does not apply to Kitco's Nadler. As someone who writes a daily column, he has years of practice in simply "filling space" in his writing.
Nadler has been the loudest voice in broadcasting the message of the manipulators. Yet, despite a year of evidence that this propaganda-campaign has been utterly ineffectual, today he is still spouting the same drivel. With many commentators providing useful and honest advice and commentary on the precious metals sector, investors could use their time much more productively than by reading the tired, repetition of the same anti-gold message from people such as Nadler. The only possible value of Nadler's pseudo-insights into this market would be as a contrarian indicator for this sector: if Nadler says gold is going down, then now is the time to buy!
