Central Banks Bought Gold at a Four-Year-High Pace in Q2

Official buyers step up again

The World Gold Council's latest report shows central banks bought 288.9 tonnes of gold in the second quarter, up 62% on the same period last year and the fastest quarterly pace in four years. The figure has run through wire services in a dozen languages today, from Jakarta to Bangkok to London, which tells you this is not a niche story — it's being read as a signal about where official money is going.

The same report flags a split market: jewellery demand remains under pressure, squeezed by the price itself, while the official sector keeps adding. One commentary today ties this to broader policy noise, pointing to dissent inside the Federal Reserve alongside the central bank buying as a source of what it calls a "fractured" gold market — official accumulation on one side, uncertain rate policy on the other.

What the index shows

Evander Signal's Golden Risk Index reads 6.70 on its 1-10 scale, in BUY MOOD territory, built from 5,672 weighted stories with full evidence coverage. The strongest single channel feeding that reading right now is geopolitical risk, not central bank buying itself — a reminder that today's official-sector story is landing on top of an already-elevated sentiment backdrop, not creating it from scratch. The index has only 12 days of live running history, too short to say anything about how well it has anticipated price moves; it should be read as a snapshot of what the news is saying today, not a forecast.

Price context

Gold spot sits at $4,153.50, up 0.58% on the day, 2.11% over the past week, 3.25% over the past month and 23.87% over the past year. That annual gain has come with volatility: the 52-week range runs from $3,293.20 to $5,318.40, and today's price is 21.9% below that high. Thirty-day realised volatility is running at 23.8% annualised — a market moving in both directions, not a smooth grind higher.

The measured record on sharp one-day moves offers some useful, if modest, context. After past one-day gains above 1.77% — the top decile of daily moves — gold's median return five trading days later has been +0.30%, and it was higher 55% of the time across 301 such episodes. Twenty days out, the median was +0.40%, higher 54% of the time. After sharp one-day falls below -1.77%, the record looks similar or slightly stronger: +0.22% median after five days, +0.63% after twenty, with gold higher 53% and 56% of the time respectively. None of this predicts what happens next from here — it simply shows that, historically, sharp one-day gold moves have not reliably reversed over the following month.

What to watch

The next test is whether the Q3 data, when it lands, shows the same pace of official buying or a step down from this four-year high. Jewellery demand's ongoing weakness — a byproduct of the price rally itself — is the other side of the ledger worth tracking, since it shows how higher prices are rationing private demand even as official reserves keep growing. Watch too whether the geopolitical channel driving today's index reading cools or intensifies, since that has been the dominant force behind current sentiment, running ahead of the central bank story itself.