COVID-19
pandemic has had and will likely continue to have serious negative effects on social, economic and financial systems, including significant uncertainty and volatility in the financial markets.
Governmental authorities and regulators throughout the world have, in the past, responded to major economic disruptions with a variety of fiscal and monetary policy changes, such as quantitative easing, new monetary programs and lower interest rates. An unexpected or quick reversal of these policies, or the ineffectiveness of these policies, is likely to increase volatility in the market generally, and could specifically increase volatility in the market for gold, which could adversely affect the price of the Shares. The outbreak could also cause the closure of futures exchanges, which could eliminate the ability of Authorized Participants to hedge purchases of Baskets, increasing trading costs of Shares and resulting in a sustained premium or discount in the Shares. The duration of the outbreak and its effects cannot be determined with any reasonable amount of certainty. A prolonged outbreak could result in an increase of the costs of GLDM, affect liquidity in the market for gold as well as the correlation between the price of the Shares and the net asset value of GLDM, any of which could adversely and materially affect the value of your Shares. The outbreak could impair information technology and other operational systems upon which GLDM’s service providers, including the Sponsor, the Administrator and the Custodian, rely, and could otherwise disrupt the ability of employees of GLDM’s service providers to perform essential tasks on behalf of GLDM.
To date, the impact of
COVID-19
has not materially affected the operations of GLDM.
In the three months ended June 30, 2020, 52,700,000 Shares (527 Creation Units) were created in exchange for 525,241.3 ounces of gold, 10,300,000 Shares (103 Creation Units) were redeemed in exchange for 102,659.3 ounces of gold and 481.3 ounces of gold were sold to pay Sponsor fees. For accounting purposes, GLDM reflects creations and redemptions on the date of receipt of a notification of a creation but does not issue Shares until the requisite amount of gold is received. Upon a redemption, GLDM delivers gold upon receipt of Shares. These creations were completed in the normal course of business.
At June 30, 2020, the Custodian held 1,426,066.8 ounces of gold in its vault, 100% of which is allocated gold in the form of good delivery gold bars with a market value of $2,521,428,713 (cost — $2,150,927,963). Subcustodians did not hold any gold in their vaults on behalf of GLDM.
At September 30, 2019, the Custodian held 697,523.6 ounces of gold in its vault, 100% of which is allocated gold in the form of good delivery gold bars with a market value of $1,036,031,998 (cost — $916,789,900). Subcustodians did not hold any gold in their vaults on behalf of GLDM.
Inspectorate International Limited conducts two counts each year of the gold bullion held on behalf of GLDM at the vaults of the Custodian. A complete bar count is conducted once per year and coincides with GLDM’s financial year end at September 30
th
. The second count is a random sample count and is conducted at a date which falls within the same financial year and was conducted most recently on February 24, 2020. The results can be found on www.spdrgoldshares.com.
Cash Resources and Liquidity
At June 30, 2020, GLDM did not have any cash balances. When selling gold to pay expenses, GLDM endeavors to sell the exact amount of gold needed to pay expenses in order to minimize GLDM’s holdings of assets other than gold or any gold receivable. As a consequence, we expect that GLDM will not record any net cash flow from its operations and that its cash balance will be zero at the end of each reporting period.
Analysis of Movements in the Price of Gold
As movements in the price of gold are expected to directly affect the price of the Shares, it is important to understand the recent movements in the price of gold. However, past movements in the price of gold are not indicators of future movements.