At the time of writing gold continues to trade above $4,800 per ounce, holding firm despite a noticeable lack of follow-through buying. At the same time, stronger-than-expected U.S. economic data has tempered immediate recession concerns. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s manufacturing index rose sharply in April, while jobless claims declined again, suggesting that parts of the labour market remain resilient.
These developments highlight a more nuanced reality. Beneath the surface, inflationary pressures are rising, employment indicators remain uneven, and the broader economic picture continues to reflect a system balancing between strength and strain. I would suggest that we are in a period of pause, before the storm.
It is within this context that in today’s video Jan Skoyles looks at what the recent spate of gold activity amongst central banks, has meant for the regulations.
On March 31st, the London Bullion Market Association and the World Gold Council launched a new data platform designed to demonstrate that gold meets the criteria required to be classified as a High Quality Liquid Asset under the Basel III framework. For over a decade, gold has been excluded from this category, not because it failed to meet the standards, but because regulators argued that sufficient data did not exist to prove its case.
That argument is now becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
In our latest video, we examine what this new platform reveals about gold’s liquidity, pricing transparency, and performance during periods of market stress. More importantly, we explore why gold remains outside the HQLA framework despite exhibiting many of the characteristics regulators claim to prioritise, and whether this reflects a question of data, or of institutional preference.
While regulatory classifications do not define gold’s underlying role, they do influence how the financial system interacts with it. As the evidence base strengthens, the debate is shifting from whether gold qualifies, to whether the system is prepared to acknowledge it.
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