Gold has been in the spotlight lately due to a massive price increase over the past few months, up +16% since its October 2022 low. This has taken many by surprise with some commentating on the change in macro narratives such as peak inflation or expectation of lower yield as the reason behind the rally. However, as we can see from the chart below, the gap between gold and US 10-year yield inflation indexed (inverted) is getting rather wide, suggesting that gold is decoupling from macro. Technical level is getting overbought in the near-term as well.

So who has been buying? The culprit, as it turns out, is Central Bank. This segment has been an active buyer since 2Q22, and even more so in 3Q22 (+115% QoQ, +341% YoY). We suspect this trend should continue in 4Q22. Second biggest buyer was the consumer (namely for jewelry) which decently increased in 3Q22 (+18% QoQ, +13% YoY). Meanwhile, investment demand from institutions was actually down significantly in 3Q22 (-41% QoQ, -47% YoY) which indicated that the narrative of gold buying due to change in macro condition is actually not that accurate.