alt Hacker NewsThis doesn't make sense. If they first sold the bars held in the US, then the gold prices rose, then they bought gold in Europe, how the hell did that amount to a capital gain of $15b? How exactly do prices rising over the course of the process lead to these $15b?
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First thought: Maybe they bought the gold first? Or the gold price was at a temporary high when they sold it?
Second thought: The numbers don't seem to check out: 129t are 4,147,456.307 troy ounces (1 troy ounce = 31.1034768 g). The total gains of 15e9 USD would thus correspond to gains of $3,616.68 per troy ounce, which seems excessively high, given that today's gold price is at ~$4,712. Even if they sold everything at the current all-time high of $5,589.38 on January 28 (and that's a big if), they would have had to buy for not more than $1,972.70, a price we last had in fall 2023.
They must have had an exceptional crystal ball!
Gold is down 10+% since its recent peak. They likely sold then and repurchased later.
Gold prices probably went up due to turmoil in middle east.
Dumpling $15B on the market should lead to a drop. Anyway, the gold price is not always going up.
Imagine they bought the gold in the US for 1b and sold for 16b. Yes they turned around and purchased 16b of order gold immediately but there's was still a transaction where they sold an asset for more than they bought it.