dbMetals: The Whole Flow Report — Who's the Mystery Buyer in Gold?

Who's the Mystery Buyer in Gold? The Fed hikes, and gold prices rise enough to break the downtrend that had contained prices since Jackson Hole. While this is consistent with our view that this hiking season the market wants to buy, (1) Chair Warsh provided little impetus for the market to attack the tape on a fundamental basis; (2) over the last session, our read of spot flows derived from Deutsche Bank's globally aggregated e-trading flows including the Autobahn suggested little inflows from the commercial and non-commercial cohorts which had been previously providing an offset to retail outflows; (3) CTA flows ended the session largely unchanged; (4) aggregate open interest in CME gold only marginally rose; and (5) Chinese ETF inflows are on the rise, but the pace of flows does not appear atypically large. That begs the question: who's the mystery buyer in gold?