IMF to Begin Selling 191 Tons of Gold (GLD) on Open Market

By IBTimes Staff Reporter | February 18 2010 8:45 AM

The first half of a large planned IMF sale of gold went to India, [Nov 2, 2009: International Monetary Fund to Sell One Eighth of Gold Stake to India] and speculation was China would snap up the second half. But it appears the remaining 191 tons will instead be sold on the open market; since this was announced gold has been under some pressure but it might be more of a knee jerk reaction (as the Reuters article below says) since I would assume the sales will happen in intermediate steps over time. While under the guise of raising money to help poor countries, I think the IMF can see the sovereign debt issues that they are going to need to assist with over the next decade and might as well start getting liquid.

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As for gold itself, for now a series of lower highs the past few months. A move over $1160 would strike me as bullish ...

Via Reuters:

Spot gold dropped about 1 percent on Thursday after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it would sell its remaining gold reserves, but settled in a narrow trading band as the market absorbed the news.
The IMF announced it would begin phased open-market sales of the remaining 191.3 tonnes of gold under a program launched last year to raise new resources for lending. To avoid disruptions of the gold market, the IMF said the open-market sales will be conducted in a phased manner over time.
This wasn't totally unexpected given what the IMF has been saying, but it was still enough to give the market a rattle, a gold dealer in Sydney said.
This is probably a knee-jerk reaction. At the end of the day, the sales from the IMF are well-known, said Jacob Oubina, senior currency strategist for forex.com.
“This could be regarded as negative, as no central bank wants this gold at this market price,” Dincer said of the IMF’s announcement. “On the other hand, the 191.3 tons will not distort the physical gold market, as buying interest for investment purposes is still intact.”
Transactions under the previous tranche of the IMF gold-sale program consisted of a 200-ton sale to the Reserve Bank of India in October, followed by November sales of two tons to the Bank of Mauritius and 10 tons to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka

[Oct 13, 2009: Largest Gold Reserves by Country]