Trust the Flow, Not the Stock

The two largest gold holders in the world are also the two least independently verified.

The US holds 8,133 tonnes on paper, but there has not been a comprehensive assay of those holdings since 1953, with only a partial inspection in 1974. Representative Massie's H.R. 3795 — the Gold Reserve Transparency Act — was tabled in 2025 and has not advanced.

China discloses ~2,313 tonnes of monetary gold. That is what the PBoC chooses to designate as monetary gold for IMF reporting purposes. Cumulative Shanghai Gold Exchange withdrawals since 2008 sit at roughly 25,000 tonnes.

A serious strand of analysis — Macleod, Rickards, Jansen — has argued for years that the true PBoC stock is materially higher. Koos Jansen's most rigorous estimate was approximately 4,000t. That is 1.7x the official disclosure. These views are not fringe. They are also partially conflated with private holdings, state bank holdings and household demand.

So what should investors actually act on? The flow data, not the stock data.

The flow is unambiguous, IMF-reportable, and reconciled across central bank disclosures. Net sovereign purchases averaged over 1,000 tonnes per year for three consecutive years — roughly double the 473t average of 2010–2021. 863t in 2025. ~755t forecast for 2026.

Trust the published list as a floor, not a ceiling.

Build the thesis on the verifiable flow data, not the unverifiable stock estimates.

When the underlying data is contested, the auditability of what you can verify becomes the entire investment process. That is the difference between commentary and a position you can size with conviction. Less searching. More strategising.™