CHINA's role in the global gold market's recent run of new record highs stood out Thursday as bullion trading in the precious metal's No.1 consumer nation stayed shut for the May Day holidays and gold prices sank by $100 per ounce.

With analysis of China's surging gold investing and trading now being rehashed as AI-generated click-bait, prices for settlement in London − still the world's central gold trading and storage hub − sank by $50 overnight before losing that much again in morning trade, dropping as low as $3203 per Troy ounce.

News-wire Reuters meantime reports that 29 analysts and traders, polled for their latest end-2025 gold price forecasts, have hiked their predictions by more than 11% on average from 3 months ago to $3065 per Troy ounce.

"Gold's fortune will continue to depend on other markets' misfortune," says one respondent.

Yet with rich-world stock markets slipping on Thursday for the first time in 8 sessions on the MSCI World Index, gold bullion hit 2-week lows in Dollar and Euro terms at €2830, plus 3-week lows in UK Pounds at £2404.

Gold then rallied almost 1.0% as New York's stock markets opened sharply higher following unexpectedly strong quarterly earnings from tech giants Microsoft and Meta.

Crude oil had earlier sunk to new 4-year lows beneath $60 per barrel of Brent and silver hit 3-week lows 30 cents beneath $32 per ounce before rallying close to $32.50.

Industrial metal copper meantime held onto yesterday's 4.3% plunge, made following news that US economic output shrank 0.3% annualized in the first quarter of this year ahead of President Trump announcing steep hikes to import trade tariffs.

"Price risks persist [in gold] given the physical market is wavering and central bank flows – while positive – are slowing," says analyst Suki Cooper at global bank and London bullion market maker Standard Chartered.

"Physical demand has tailed off," agrees analyst Rhona O'Connell at brokerage StoneX, "but [in due course it] will adjust to higher prices.

"Volatility is more of an enemy to demand than absolute levels."

This week's Hindu festival of Akshaya Tritiya saw gold sales in No.2 consumer India sink from last year, the Times of India reports, with jewellers in Ahmedabad selling "a meagre 50kg on Tuesday, stark contrast to the 150kg bought on the same day in 2024."

January-to-March already saw Indian gold jewelry demand plunge more than 1/4 by weight year-on-year according to yesterday's new Gold Demand Trends report from the mining industry's World Gold Council.

But India's gold coin and small-bar demand, in contrast, rose 7.1% from Q1 2024 to stand 25.0% above the past 5 years' first-quarter average.

Showing a similar switch to Chinese households investing in gold coins and bars rather than jewelry, that put retail gold investment products close to 2/5ths of India's total household demand in Q1, the highest proportion since the global gold price crash of Q2 2013 spurred near-record heavy buying overall.

Courtesy: Bullionvault