After a lot of late-March huffing and puffing in COMEX markets to achieve a month-end close for spot gold below $1,300, trading in physical gold markets proved especially robust during the first week of April. To us, this suggests gold’s sub-$1,300 spot price is destined to be short lived. A topic of longstanding interest in the precious metals space has been the interplay between paper and physical markets. Paper gold markets are best exemplified by exchanges such as COMEX, which trade high volumes of futures and options contracts, but very little tangible metal. In contrast, the world’s primary markets for physical ... (full story)