The revision
Standard Chartered's metals team reports that a second-quarter rebound in official sector purchases outweighs revised weakness in the first quarter. The first-quarter softness that circulated in the spring was partly a reporting artefact.
Reserve data reaches the International Monetary Fund with a lag and is frequently restated. Positions taken on the first print of a quarter are routinely wrong by the third.
Why the market keeps getting this wrong
Official sector demand is structurally sticky and reported irregularly, which produces an illusion of volatility. Traders read a soft month as a change of policy when it usually reflects one large buyer's settlement timing.
The disciplined approach is a rolling twelve-month average of reported purchases. On that measure the trend has been unbroken since 2022, including through the quarter that was briefly reported as weak.
Implication
If official demand is the price floor, and the floor is intact, then the second-quarter consolidation was an investment-flow event. That is consistent with the exchange-traded fund outflows reported for the same period.