How Much Gold Do Big Countries Hold

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  1.    United States
Gold holdings: 8,133.5 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 76.6%
Consumer demand in Q2 2012 for Jewelry: 19.8 tonnes
Consumer demand for total bar and coin invest in Q2 2012: 14.4 tonnes

2.    Germany
Gold holdings: 3,395.5 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 73.9%
Consumer demand for total bar and coin invest in Q2 2012: 34.2 tonnes

3.    IMF
According to the International Monetary Fund, it holds a relatively 
large amount of gold among its assets, not only for reasons of financial 
soundness, but also to meet unforeseen contingencies.
Gold holdings: 2,814.0

4.    Italy
Gold holdings: 2,451.8 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 73.2%
Consumer demand in Q2 2012 for Jewelry: 4.8 tonnes

5.    France
Gold holdings: 2,435.4 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 73.2%
Consumer demand for total bar and coin invest in Q2 2012: 0.6 tonnes

6.    China
Gold holdings: 1,054.1 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 1.8%
Consumer demand in Q2 2012 for Jewelry: 93.8 tonnes
Consumer demand for total bar and coin invest in Q2 2012: 51.1 tonnes

7.    Switzerland
Gold holdings: 1,040.1 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 11.7%
Consumer demand for total bar and coin invest in Q2 2012: 17.3 tonnes

8.    Russia
Gold holdings: 934.5 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 10.1%
Consumer demand in Q2 2012 for Jewelry: 18.6 tonnes

9.    Japan
Gold holdings: 765.2 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 3.4%
Consumer demand in Q2 2012 for Jewelry: 3.8 tonnes
Consumer demand for total bar and coin invest in Q2 2012: 5.1 tonnes

10.  Netherlands
Gold holdings: 612.5 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 61.1%

11.  India
Gold holdings: 557.7 tonnes
Percentage of total foreign reserves: 10.6%
Consumer demand in Q2 2012 for Jewelry: 124.8 tonnes
Consumer demand for total bar and coin invest in Q2 2012: 56.5 tonnes

FIIs lose more than MF when market tanks.

Call it default or design, local fund managers have been luckier than their global counterparts by remaining underinvested in smalland mid-cap counters on more than a single occasion when these shares have tanked. 

While FIIs have been the single largest contributors of liquidity in the Indian stock markets, their track record of picking small- and mid-cap stocks does not inspire much confidence. 

Data since 2001 shows that FIIs, which held more shares in momentum stocks than mutual funds, suffered higher losses during the 2001 Ketan Parekh scam, the 2008-09 stock market plunge and the recent carnage in small- and mid-cap stocks. For instance, MF holdings stood between nil and 3% in stocks such as Core Education, Arshiya International, Tulip Telecom, Jindal Cotex or Gemini Communications, which fell more than 60% this year. However, FII holdings in these companies was between 5% and 22%. The case was similar before the Ketan Parikh scam in 2001 that rocked the markets and the 2008-09 global financial recession which caused a 50% erosion in the value of midcaps like Fedders Lloyd, Birla Power Solutions, Moser Baer, Jindal South West and GVK Power, in which FIIs held 20-32% stake. 

Taking investment calls based on business models, rather than on balance-sheet fundamentals, interacting more frequently with management and, ironically, a failure to muster fresh corpus from investors have saved domestic MF managers from burning a bigger hole in their pockets than foreign institutional investors . 

“It’s about being able to base a decision on a business idea rather than just on market-cap and liquidity,” says Chokkalingam G, chief investment officer, Centrum, with . 1,500 crore worth of assets under management. 

“Local fund managers believe, and rightly, that market cap and liquidity are outcomes of great business ideas and don’t apply these parameters to base their investment decisions unlike many FIIs which are process-driven and will invest in a counter only if it, say, has a market cap higher than $300 million–500 million and enjoys high liquidity.” Market experts says though FIIs are aggressive investors and have made good returns by investing in India’s blue-chip stocks, they have failed to identify good mid- and smallcap stocks which demand a bottom-up approach of investment among other things. 

“The foreign fund manager based out of Hong Kong or Singapore typically sits on a folio from 10 countries, has a small team with each person responsible for selecting stocks from three countries, making it impractical for them to have a bottom-up approach that’s needed in small- and mid-cap stocks,” said Ramanathan K, CIO & ED, ING Mutual Fund. “Indian fund managers, on the other hand, have continuous assessment monitoring and management interactions and can take decisions guided not solely by the balance sheet.” 
The difference in approach is borne by a well-known foreign brokerage having recommended a ‘Buy’ on KS Oils on June 28, 2011 (FII stake: 11.21%, MF stake: 0.1%) with a price upside of 137% even though the stock had fallen 52% to . 19 in the prior six months. The stock has fallen continuously since then to . 2.79 apiece at present. Factors such as these, feel Chokkalingam and Ramnathan, were responsible for equity mid-cap and small cap mutual funds posting average returns of -7.98% over the past three months against a 10.84% fall in the BSE Mid-cap index and a 17.66% decline in BSE Small-cap index. 
However, rather than attributing the relatively better performance of domestic MFs to design, experts like Nirmal Jain, chairman, India Infoline, said rising redemptions and lesser fresh fund inflows were responsible for their underownership of small- and mid-cap stocks. 

“Over the past five years, mutual funds and insurance companies have faced more redemptions and are getting lesser fresh fund inflows at a time FIIs have pumped in billions of dollars,” said Jain. “This is one of the main reasons markets have become shallow and tank on selling by FIIs.” 

‘The Home (-sickness) Bias of Foreign Holdings’, a recent academic paper, finds that among US-based fund managers, a Brazilian-born manager who speaks fluent Portuguese and is familiar with the country's business culture had better results when investing in Brazilian companies than a German-born manager. 
“Domestic fund managers were perhaps more successful in containing losses as they looked beyond just the balance sheet,” said a fund manager who focuses on mi-caps.