GOLD BARS traded in London’s wholesale bullion market fell and then rose back to $1935 per ounce Wednesday lunchtime, standing unchanged for the week so far as Western stock markets stemmed the steep plunge of the last 4 sessions. With the EuroStoxx 600 rallying 0.9%, the Nasdaq 100 index of US-listed tech stocks headed for a 1.5% rise at today’s opening in New York, trimming its plunge of 1/10th from last Wednesday’s new all-time high. Relative to gold – against which the index peaked at more than 15 ounces at the top of the DotCom Bubble in March 2000 – the Nasdaq has now gone sideways since the middle of 2018, despite rising by more than one-half in cash terms.
Gold prices in China today fell to trade $51 per ounce below London quotes, suggesting weak demand versus supply in the metal’s No.1 mining, importing and household consumer nation – from where it is illegal to export gold bullion bars. “There is a difference in gold prices [between] Hong Kong and mainland China,” the South China Morning Post today quotes a police officer in the city, blaming this 10-20% gap for an attempt to smuggle 20 one-kilogram gold bars – worth around US$1m – into the formerly ‘autonomous’ region of the Communist dictatorship.