By: Rhona O'Connell, Head of Market Analysis
Net Swiss gold exports to Hong Kong and the U.S. rise in June; S.E. Asia still uncertain
The Swiss Federal Customs Administration released the figures for its June trade this morning; this piece looks at the gold patterns and a second will look at platinum and palladium. As far as gold is concerned it looks as if we are getting back towards normal.
The numbers tend to confirm what we have been observing in regional gold flows so far this year.
The figures that have caught the headlines this morning are those with the United States, with gross exports of 31.0t, a sizeable jump from the average of 10.6tpm in January to May. -Taking exports from the United States into Switzerland into account gives us net exports of 22.1t. To put this into context we need to look back a few years. The massive dislocation in airline logistics last year saw bank risk officers swing into action to require heavy imports of gold into New York, as and when possible, just in case their COMEX short positions (which are essentially a function of financing the long physical positions held elsewhere, in the Over the Counter market), had to come to delivery; at that point all COMEX warehouse delivery points had to be within 150 miles of New York.. This changed the historical pattern, which had been for net US exports into Switzerland (average monthly volumes 2017-2019; net exports to Switzerland of 12.6tpm). Although those short positions did not come to delivery (they very rarely do), gold has still been flowing into the United States, apart from March and April this year when almost 50t came back. COMEX gold inventories, meanwhile, continued to rise all the way through to early February this year, lost 140t between then and mid-April and have fluctuated since. The net change in inventory on COMEX in the first six months of the year was a loss of 84t.
Swiss net trade in gold with the United States, t
Source: Swiss Federal Customs Administration, StoneX
COMEX gold inventories, t
Source: Bloomberg, StoneX
Meanwhile in Asia, the impact of the lockdown in India is clear, with net Swiss exports dropping to 2.0t in May and a small recovery to 6.3t, after an average 32tpm in 2019. The improvement in the Chinese market is palpable, with 40t and 33t going in in April and May, although June was slower; the quarter as a whole saw net imports of 91t, after a 12-month total from April 2020-March 2021 of just 14t; and of 157t in the 12 months previously. On a smaller scale, after months of net exports to Switzerland out of Hong Kong there are now some signs of the improvement, with three of the past six months showing small net imports into Hong Kong.
The cautious nature of other parts of south-east Asia, where there has been regular two-way flow, with bargain hunting on one hand meeting some selling into strength, is reflected in the numbers: Indonesia has been a small net exporter since last November, while Thailand has, in the main, been a net purchaser. Singapore, which is more of an entre-pôt, consistently takes in small amounts.
Moving further west and the UAE is continuing to send metal back to Switzerland; as we noted last month, a good portion of this material may have come back from India.
So on balance, among the countries that we monitor Switzerland averaged a monthly export of 59t. If we strip out the trade with the United States, the monthly average is almost unchanged, although the pattern shifts. What is telling, though, is that ex-U.S., Switzerland’s monthly average in 2020 was an import of five tonnes per month, against an average monthly export of 54t in 2019. For the first six months of this year (again excluding the United States) the average net export from Switzerland has been 45 tpm. So taken all-in-all, it looks as if trade flows are signalling a gradual return to normal.
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