Inability to read Chinese and to understand the nuances of a title change may well have caused us to publish a potentially misleading note about the latest SGE gold announcements and we are indebted to China follower Koos Jansen for an answer to the question posed in our most recent article: Latest SGE gold withdrawals figure so large it must be a typo. Mustn’t it?

Koos Jansen writing on bullionstar.com has come up with an answer to this anomaly. According to Koos, in restructuring its reporting, the SGE is actually reporting a different figure than its old straight withdrawals total – but is now reporting what it describes as ‘Delivery Amount’ instead.  He notes that this is described as: the sum of the trading volume of physical products and the contract delivery volume of deferred products. This is a rather different figure – much larger – than the old withdrawals amount.  To read Jansen’s explanation, and what it means, click on ‘Are SGE Withdrawals Gone?

To us the nuance of the category Delivery amount and the old Witdrawals was lost without Jansen’s explanation of the change in SGE reporting policy, which is set out in full in the article noted above.  If this SGE announcement pattern continues then we will no longer be able to compare the SGE’s gold withdrawals on a like for like basis any more.