So, the 1 mo rates turned positive around September 13 and have stayed positive since. Of course that means that the lease rates (LIBOR - GOFO) has been dropping. With dropping lease rates, it's less attractive to lease gold into the market.
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Today (April 3, 2014) the one month Gold Forward Offered Rate (GOFO) turned negative again. This is the seventh time since July 8, 2013 this has happened. I would like to share a few thoughts on this.
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The Consequences Of Negative GOFO
From looking at the equations we can conclude GOFO is the difference in interest rates between US dolars (USD) and gold (XAU). When the three months GOFO is negative, it means the interest rate to borrow XAU for three months is higher than the interest rate to borrow USD for three months; there is more demand for XAU than USD. This suggests the value of gold expressed in dollars will rise.
Bear in mind we live in a ZIRP bubble bath, there is such USD supply (out of thin air) that LIBOR is exorbitant low.
Nevertheless in the following chart we can see that when GOFO is trending down the price of gold (XAUUSD) is pushed up.
In the above chart I made the negative GOFO periods grey. The gold price (right axis) tends to go up in these periods. If GOFO persist to trend lower it’s very likely the price of gold will rise. When we look back a couple of years, we can see that every time GOFO dipped in negative territory a strong bull market in gold followed. I expect to see the same in coming years.
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That said, he only has a [relative;y] small proportion of his dough in silver, with the rest in T-Bills, a college account for his kid and a traditional after-tax IRA. We'll see.
Turk: “After the markets closed here in London this past Friday, Eric, Reuters announced that the London Metal Exchange will stop clearing over-the-counter gold trades “from Sept. 22 after the London Bullion Market Association said its members would no longer supply price data for forward curves.” That statement implies that the GOFO rate will no longer be publicly available on the LBMA site....