London

Submitted by Ronan Manly, Bullionstar.com

In February 2017 while preparing for a presentation in Gothenburg about central bank gold, I emailed Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, enquiring whether the Riksbank physically audits Sweden’s gold and whether it would provide me with a gold bar weight list of Sweden’s gold reserves (gold bar holdings). The Swedish official gold reserves are significant and amount to 125.7 tonnes, making the Swedish nation the world’s 28th largest official gold holder.

Authored by Sukru Hanioglu via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The historic breakdown in Anglo-Ottoman relations is a useful model for evaluating today’s troubled alliance between the United States and Turkey

At the end of 2016 we reported that the formerly invincible London home market had suffered its biggest crack in years, when home prices plunged the most in six years according to Rightmove. Asking prices in London dropped 4.3% in December with inner London down 6%.  Meanwhile, the most exclusive neighborhoods, like Kensington and Chelsea, recorded even sharper declines at nearly 10% as home buyers migrated to cheaper areas of the city.

Something strange happened during yesterday's afternoon London fix: as gold was surging on a spike in geopolitical fears, which slammed the USDJPY below 110 and sent traders scrambling into safe assets such as TSYs, London's gold price benchmark waterfalled lower before fixed some $12 below the spot price on Tuesday afternoon as "the auction appeared to become locked in a downward spiral", according to Reuters.

European stocks rebounded after a downbeat start, aided by a return to the post-Euro open momentum ignition in the USDJPY while Asian stocks rose after China shares surged 1.5%, the most since August. For now S&P futures are fractionally in the red, although we expect them to turn progressively higher as US traders get to their desks to frontrun the now traditional "post open" ramp.