news.goldseek.com / By: Julian D. W. Phillips / 11 April 2014
In short, no it doesn’t! We will look at why not, in this article.
The Gold Fix
Despite the furore surrounding the Gold Fix [unfairly, we believe] it is a singularly determined attempt amongst commodities to set a twice daily price that does reflect demand and supply of gold, at those moments. To understand this we have to see what happens at the Fixing sessions.
The five banks involved in fixing the morning and afternoon Fix of the gold price open a conference line to each other at 10.30a.m. and at 3.00p.m. in the afternoon. At the same time each bank opens their lines to contact their main clients, who could include mining companies, refiners of gold, jewellers, gold dealers and all the main professionals in the gold market. In turn these professional open their lines to their main clients which could also include central banks as well as wealthy individuals and other gold markets. These then react to a price put up by the Chairman of the Fix, representing his bank. This price is sent down the lines and each participant states the amount they are net buyers or sellers of. Each bank ‘nets out’ the demand and supply among his own clients before passing on the net order to the Fixing. At each price, orders down the line change and the price adjusted accordingly. Once the market is agreed upon a particular price all transactions are done at that price.