00:00You must have had a banana's January when gold was just making new high after new high. And then, of
00:05course, the Iran war kind of took everything down completely.
00:09Walk us through what it's been like for you since gold has now refound its footing in the last couple
00:15of weeks.
00:15We've seen certainly a pivot before we saw this sell-off in prices. Price positioning was at record highs, whether
00:22we're looking at ETF flows, tactical positioning was growing.
00:25We're still seeing pretty robust physical demand. That has tilted. So initially, we saw that safe haven bid materialize when
00:32the conflict started.
00:33But then gold's role as a liquidity provider really kicked in. And that's been front and center rather than its
00:40safe haven status.
00:41And that's meant that we've seen a variety of investors really needing to turn to cash or meeting margin calls.
00:47And it's resulted in hefty liquidation.
00:49If we look at March, that was the sharpest sell-off on a monthly basis since the global financial crisis.
00:55So we have seen liquidation across the space.
00:58ETF holdings down with the sharpest margin since September 2022. Tactical positioning has declined. But also, we're starting to see
01:05some pockets of selling from the central banks.
01:07So we've seen quite a shift in the drivers behind gold in terms of those flows.
01:12OK, that's a lot to go through in just a couple of months. How has the investor base for gold
01:16changed?
01:17Who is it made up of now versus what it was at the start of the year?
01:20At the start of the year, we were starting to see much more retail interest. I think the biggest change
01:24that we've seen in the space really started in 2025,
01:27when we were seeing much more retail interest, family offices coming into the gold market. And then we also started
01:33seeing a shift back towards some of those real asset managers,
01:36like some of the pension funds coming back into gold. So gold has been re-evaluated. We've seen a lot
01:41of structural drivers, secular drivers,
01:43really behind that allocation into the gold space. And because of that, we've seen a much longer term positioning in
01:50the gold space.
01:51That has been hampered by liquidity needs in the last couple of weeks. But I'd say the universe of investors
01:57in the gold space has really expanded.
Comments