Loading ...The gold clearing banks of London Precious Metals Clearing Ltd (LPMCL) have exhausted the metal they had available for delivery in their own vaults… so they are trying to borrow as much gold as possible via the gold lending market at the Bank of England. But this looks exhausted too.
These clearing banks (JP Morgan, HSBC, UBS and ICBC Standard) need to keep gold in their vaults for their own loco london liquidity. But it looks like they don’t have any more gold to do this.
Counterparty risk has therefore risen between all the LBMA bullion banks which trade unallocated “gold credit” between each other. The clearers, the market makers and all the other LBMA bullion banks and brokers and traders. About 50+ entities.
basically they trade paper “claims” on gold (or the electronic equivalent). These claims are now trading at a discount to reflect the fact that they can’t be converted at will into physical due to a lack of availability of sufficient loco London physical gold.