Official-sector gold demand has been net positive for fifteen consecutive quarters. The composition of the buying is more informative than the total: it is concentrated among central banks whose reserves are held in jurisdictions they no longer regard as neutral.
The appeal to a reserve manager is not the return profile, which is mediocre, or the yield, which is negative after storage. It is that a bar in your own vault has no counterparty and cannot be frozen by a decision taken in another capital.
The asset is not the point. The custody is the point.
Reported holdings almost certainly understate the true position. Reporting is voluntary in practice, and several of the largest accumulators report on a schedule that appears to be discretionary.
This is a slow, structural bid rather than a speculative one, which is why it has been so difficult for momentum-driven positioning models to fade.
