China increased its gold reserves for a fourth month

Meanwhile, data on Tuesday revealed that China increased its gold reserves for a fourth month in February. ''Reports that China's central bank added another 25t of gold to their reserves in February are keeping the spotlight on physical flows in precious metals, which are increasingly dominating financial flows,'' analysts at TD Securities said. 

''This fits with our observations of the microstructure in gold — elevated premiums in China, despite modest mainland wholesale demand implied by Shanghai Gold Exchange withdrawals and little activity in our tracking of Shanghai positioning, suggest that elevated Chinese demand is still overwhelmingly driven by official sector purchases,'' the analysts explained, adding, ''in turn, while the focus remains on Chair Powell's congressional testimony this session, financial flows are increasingly being dominated by physical demand.''