Most gold bull runs typically start slowly as it faces the headwinds from good selling by frustrated longs who see price strength as an opportunity to exit … once we are through that gold is unfettered for a faster move higher as prices go inelastic. We seem to be in that phase now.

The high RSI suggests that gold is due a temporary pause - but it also suggests to us that it is brewing for the mother of all moves higher. We just need to breach the $1360 level and we are off to the races.

Indian imports for December

For the commentary, RT actually asked me quite a few interesting questions on both the Australian gold and other related gold topics. Since both the extended questions and the answers might be of interest to readers, we have decided to publish below the full set of questions and answers in Q&A format, which are as follows:

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) claims to have 80 tons of the precious metal. Nearly all of the country's gold bars are reportedly stored in a bailment arrangement, in an allocated gold account, at the Bank of England vaults in London, with a very small amount of gold stored at the RBA headquarters in Sydney. However, there are questions whether the gold is still there, according to Manly.

SGE withdrawals for January

Flows this week

It would be more productive in the first instance for Italian politicians to push for a full physical independent audit of all the Italian gold, both the 1200 tonnes of gold which is said to be stored under the Bank’s headquarter’s in Rome, as well as the ‘other half’ of the gold, which the Bank of Italy claims is mostly stored at the Federal Reserve vaults in New York (FRBNY), but which no one, including Italian politicians has ever seen.

This should also include publication of a full ‘weight list’ of all the Italian gold, including every refiner serial number of every gold bar claimed to be held. Because if you don’t have the gold, then you can’t sell it. And the first proof that you have the gold is a full independent physical audit.

In this edition of Gold Investor, we look back to the financial crisis; we consider the effect on the gold market since then and we look to the future.

The idea to liquidate Italy's gold in order to fund higher state spending appears to have emerged from Beppe Grillo, the co-founder of Five Star, who last September wrote that "It would allow us to finally put an end to this annoying story about the fact that ‘there is no money’", adding "why do citizens have to sell their necklaces and not the state?”

“Novem is a better way to buy gold, with all purchases verified by third-parties at the time of purchase, secure storage with third-party auditing, and at the time of sale. The differentiation from other gold-backed coins is 100% liquidity and ‘old economy’ precious metals industry certifications,” said a Novem spokesperson.