After China's official gold reserves rose for the first time in around two years (since Oct 2016) in December, Beijing appears to have joined the global gold rush, increasing its gold reserves for the third month in a row in February to 60.26 million ounces.

Bank of Italy’s Governor Ignazio Visco said on Monday the country’s reserves of gold belonged to the central bank and could not be used to fund government spending.

Romania may be set to join a wave of countries moving their gold home from vaults abroad after the nation’s de facto leader started a push to relocate 61 tons of the reserves, worth about $2.4 billion, from the U.K.

At least 8 tons of gold were removed from the Venezuelan central bank’s vaults last week, an opposition legislator and three government sources told Reuters, in the latest sign of President Nicolas Maduro’s desperation to raise hard currency amid tightening sanctions.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday that the idea of plugging budget holes by using the country’s gold reserves, which are held by the Bank of Italy, could be a good idea.

China has joined a global central bank gold rush in the last two months by increasing its official gold reserves, even though the purchase remains modest compared to the volume of the mainland’s foreign exchange reserves, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China on Monday.

Gold is a highly liquid yet scarce asset, and it is no one’s liability. It is bought as a luxury good as much as an investment. As such, gold can play four fundamental roles in a portfolio: a source of long-term returns, a diversifier that can mitigate losses in times of market stress, a liquid asset with no credit risk that has outperformed fiat currencies, and a means to enhance overall portfolio performance.

A surge in gold purchases by central banks to the highest since 1967 helped push global demand for the metal up 4 percent last year, the World Gold Council (WGC) said on Thursday.

Venezuela will sell 15 tonnes of gold from central bank vaults to the United Arab Emirates in coming days in return for euros in cash. In total, the plan is to sell 29 tonnes of gold held in Caracas by February.

Just hours after The Bank of England refused to hand over $1.2 billion of Venezuela's gold from its custody vaults to President Maduro, The Guardian reports that a UK foreign office minister is now urging the same Bank of England to transfer the bullion to the self-proclaimed interim leader Juan Guaidó.

Venezuela’s gold holdings in the Bank of England have jumped after it closed out a gold swap deal with Deutsche Bank, according to two sources, as Britain remains reluctant to release gold held for the troubled OPEC nation.

Russia has overtaken China to become the world’s fifth largest official sector holder of gold as Western sanctions drove buying by its central bank to record highs in 2018, its data showed on Friday.

The People’s Bank of China increased holdings to 59.56 million ounces by the end of December, or about 1,853 metric tons, from 59.24 million ounces previously.

The top reasons why you should buy physical gold and silver in 2019.

The Bank of France has partnered with U.S. banking group JPMorgan to expand its range of gold bullion services for central banks.

John Edmonds, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of commodities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, price manipulation and spoofing.

Gold demand was 964.3t in Q3, just 6.2t higher y-o-y. Robust central bank buying and a 13% rise in consumer demand offset large ETF outflows.

Last month we saw imports of gold into Switzerland and then exports to Asia and India. Last month, over 70% of the gold import figures (into Switzerland) came from London and the United States.

Hungary’s central bank increased its gold reserves 10-fold, citing the need to improve its holdings’ safety, joining regional peers with relatively high ownership in the European Union’s east.

In recent weeks we have been wary that, despite highly favorable COTs and Hedgers charts and rotten sentiment indicators etc, a general asset liquidation might drag the PM sector even further down, but Thursday’s extraordinarily positive action by the sector serves to allay those fears.