The bulliondesk.com reports:

Premiums for gold bars in Tokyo rose to 50 cents this week from 25 cents last week, according to one source. They had stood at 50 cents during the first week of July but had been in negative territory in the preceding months...

"[Gold] has started to see quite good demand overall from Asian sector, Far East and India," a Switzerland-based trader said. "At these levels there has been some good demand and activity there and this should lend some good support to the gold market."

"Even in the Middle East we are starting to see some more demand coming in... overall, we’re starting to see some more interest because the market is trying to consolidate," he added.

In Europe, requests for kilobars have picked up…

As noted earlier, local Vietnam gold rose to a $26.88 premium to world gold of $1,182.20 this morning (Monday $21.70/$1,192.80)

Shanghai gold closed at a $3.99 premium to world gold of $1,183.78 on volume equivalent to 7,902 NY contracts (Monday $1.81/$1,191.85).

Opening for the first time this week, TOCOM found world gold $26 lower than Friday’s close, and sold. On day session volume equivalent to 12,453 NY lots, open interest fell 3.374 tonnes (1,085 NY) and the public cut 2.761 tonnes (4.33%) from their long. The active contract closed down 73 yen, but world gold actually gained some $2.30 over the course of the session.

The ECB weekly statement of condition indicates that aggregate "gold and gold receivables" rose E1Mm (989zs!!!) because of the purchase of gold coin by a captive CB. Last week no change was reported. This apparent inertia is of course much less comforting than it was, now that the BIS has been revealed to have been swapping such large quantities of gold, almost certainly originating with ECB CBs.

The bulliondesk.com reports Russia added 200,000 ozs (6.2 tonnes) to its FX reserves last month (May 34.4 tonnes).

Having experienced an $8 sell-off in the European morning, gold has staged an abrupt rally in the NY floor session, both in $US and Euros. Estimated volume at 10AM was 78,960, of which some 34,000 was done pre open.

Perhaps the gold shares had heard something late yesterday.