Since Britain defeated the Dutch, the "coachmen of the sea", in the 17th century, London has replaced Amsterdam as the world's largest gold market.

Even though Britain's economy was gradually overtaken by the United States and other countries more than 200 years later, London still stubbornly maintained the crown of the world's largest gold market for more than a century, guarding the last afterglow of the "empire on which the sun never sets".

Now, however, that glimmer may be gone, with New York taking the crown of the largest gold market to New York.

In the London gold market, gold trading is mainly done through market makers led by the five major gold dealers. Unlike the exchange model represented by the U.S. gold market, gold trading on the London Stock Exchange is mainly through centralized matchmaking.

The market maker model is that each market maker quotes the bid price and ask price according to their own strength and operating conditions, and the transaction is more flexible, and the purity, weight and delivery location of gold can be selected by the customer.

Due to the over-the-counter trading in the London gold market, the exact trading volume has not been accurately counted, and can only be roughly estimated through monthly clearing data.

The London gold market has always been known to have higher trading volumes than clearing figures, and it has advertised itself as the world's largest gold market.

However, in times of financial crisis, as the demand for transparency in the London gold market increased, and more data outlined the true size of the market, traders found that the spot gold market was far from as large as they thought.

At the current gold price, London trades more than 30 million ounces of gold every day, or nearly 940 tons.

Given that the total amount of gold produced by mines worldwide is around 3,000 tonnes per year, this means that the average daily gold trading volume in London is close to one-third of the annual production.

While this figure is not low, in comparison, New York's gold futures volume is more than half of the world's annual daily production, which equates to at least 450 tonnes more traded per day than each trading day in London.

Of course, even if it is overtaken by New York, the importance of the London gold market has not diminished.

After all, according to the data, 63 per cent of gold transactions in the London market are used for spot trading, 31 percent for swaps or forwards, and the remaining 6 percent for options and leasing businesses. 手机端 一秒記住『→m.\B\iq\u\g\\o\m』 provides you with wonderful \ novel reading.

This means that the London gold market continues to play a pivotal role in physical gold trading.

In contrast, while the New York market is larger, it is dominated by derivatives trading and physical delivery is negligible.

From the point of view of the impact on physical gold, the London gold market may not be as large as previously anticipated, but it is as important as it has always been believed.

At present, the four major pricing banks in the London gold market are Rothschild International Investment Bank, Scotiabank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Credit Suisse First Boston Bank exited the London gold market in 2004.

London gold, in short, is a narrow term for 400 ounces of gold bricks of 99.5 purity, which are stored in underground vaults in the city of London.

35 million pounds, at the current exchange rate, a pound sterling is worth 1.633 US dollars, 57.155 million US dollars, according to the current price of 986 US dollars of gold, a total of 57900 ounces can be purchased, a total of 57.09 million US dollars.

Watching the account go from £35 million to $60,000, Arthur's mood was really indescribable.

In London gold trading, investors do not have to withdraw physical gold, so that the transportation, storage, inspection, identification and other steps of gold are omitted, and the difference between the buying price and the selling price is less than the difference between the buying and selling price of real gold. In addition, some companies do not charge any commissions and handling fees from customers, which further reduces the investment cost of investors.

The genuine pound only took less than ten minutes to change into a pile of vouchers in a handful of Chinese bags, and Arthur felt that the document bag in his hand was a little light, but his heart was a little heavy. TVmobile/

Without seeing the physical gold, Arthur always felt empty in his heart, so he wanted to go to the bank's underground vault to see, but the bank naturally couldn't agree to this kind of request, but in the face of Arthur's big customer with status, they didn't dare to offend, so they had to invite the bank's vault manager out to explain to Arthur in person.

"There is only a small part of the gold stored here, and the gold reserve of our bank is the third largest in the world after the Bank of England and Chase, and the gold warehouse has always been non-public, and the secrecy has been very good, so far no one knows where it is, hehe, the outside world even doubts whether it exists.

You can rest assured that your gold is safe there。。。。。。 “

The bank's vault manager explained to Arthur as he placed a black suitcase on the table with a smile on his face.

Under Arthur's curious gaze, the other party opened the black leather case, which contained a document bag, two blue velvet bags with the bank's emblem, and two white gloves.

The bank manager, who had been smiling, first opened the file bag, then respectfully handed Arthur a stack of photos inside, explaining: "This is a picture of our underground vault, and you can see that there are 80 gold bricks on each wooden shelf, each 12.5 kilograms, that is, one ton of gold on each wooden shelf."

The one pictured here is the World Gold Council's spokesperson, Melinstein Lee... ”

Arthur looked at the photos of the vault in his hand, the entire underground vault was like an underground parking lot, and the rectangular shelves built with wooden planks were stacked with yellow gold bricks, stacked neatly, and the scale was shocking and sighing.

"At current prices, there is $18 billion worth of gold stored here. I believe that these records can prove that our bank's gold warehouse in the UK is indeed real... The bank vault manager also laughed at himself with humor.

Arthur could only echo and shake his head and smile, then put down the photo and said: "I trust your bank, otherwise I would not choose your bank to buy physical gold." ”

"Thank you for your trust. The bank manager said with a professional smile on his face, bowing slightly, and then handed Arthur a pair of white gloves with both hands, and he picked up a pair and put it on himself.

Picking up a velvet bag from the suitcase with some difficulty, untying the knot, and taking out a gold brick inside, Arthur looked at the gold brick that the other party was holding in both hands, his eyes couldn't help but light up, and he suppressed the small excitement in his heart.

I have to say that gold is really a good thing, even if Arthur, who is worth tens of millions, still has an urge to hold it in his hand and take a good look at it when he sees the gold bricks.

The manager of the bank vault held the gold brick in both hands and handed it to Arthur, who was hot-eyed, and said with a smile: "This kind of gold brick is printed with the number and the emblem of the processor, and the earliest meaning of the word hallmark in English refers to this emblem on the gold brick."

Through the number of each gold brick, the gold brick can be registered in the name of the owner, which is called allocated, if this kind of gold brick wants to be traded, you must go to the basement to find out the gold brick of the number for delivery, which is very inconvenient... ”

As he spoke, the other party opened another velvet bag, took out another gold brick from it, handed it to Arthur and introduced: "Therefore, there is this kind of gold brick that can be traded in the market, most of which are bearer registered gold bricks. ”

Arthur compared the difference between the two gold bricks in his hand, and at the same time, his heart beat faster very uncompetitively, no way, gold is such a metal, it makes people so obsessed.

Gold is "the sun that can be touched." In Latin, gold means "shining twilight." No matter who you are, you like to decorate yourself with gold and decorate your life, and no one in the world will be indifferent to gold, not obsessed, and not admirable.

Gold has become a means for people to show off their dignity and wealth. People with money and power have made gold into daily necessities, and some have even made gold into weapons.

Looking at the two gold bricks in his hand, Arthur fell into a tangle, he had an urge to exchange a few gold bricks and take them home to have a good time, but reason quickly suppressed this unreliable impulse.

After all, the storage, inspection, and appraisal of gold are too troublesome, especially in storage, and it is definitely a big trouble to keep it at home. Rather than being careful all day long and worrying about security, it is undoubtedly the right choice to keep it in the bank.

Collecting his thoughts, Arthur indifferently handed back the two gold bricks in his hand to the bank vault manager and said, "Thank you." ”