gld lost another 4.5 tons, page-31

what you're missing Dan is that the ETFs are only a small subset of investor holdings. However, these ETFS provide a valuable insight (window) into the psychology of former buyers and their selling... useful public information.

However, if ETF's didn't exist the gold price would still be falling and physical would be flowing to China nonetheless. If you recall not so long ago, the conspiracy bugs on this site were claiming that GLD didn't even have any physical. Now everyone is focusing on their physical outflows!

Investor holdings of 35,000 tonnes are greater than central banks holdings, so we need to consider this component in the context of the overall market. However, nobody does this in the gold blogosphere, because conspiracies sell and subsequently the focus is always on central banks.

Gold price movements can usually be explained by what investors are doing, and it appears even the die hard retail holders are starting to sell in recent weeks, given Sprott fund evidence. This follows the institutional selling during first half of 2013.