They sold the existing holdings and bought new of equivalent weight(?), so somehow they ended on profit on those moves.

Over about a year they sold their 'non-standard' (seems to be bars below the modern purity standards) US reserves, and replaced them with new reserves purchased elsewhere which are now stored in France. As the price of gold continued to rise as they did this, they ended up making a bunch of dinero while also centralizing their reserves.

It's gold only if it comes from the Dore région of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling metal.

Gold in hand is worth $15B in the bush?

My guess is they buy before selling. An increasing market with a large buy might increase enough to allow for a profitable sell.

On top of this, this is physical gold, so location of the gold must play into it as well.

What makes you say that?

Are you suggesting they did this for technical or economic reasons? Like what? Is the US charging an unreasonable storage fee?

I'd read the article, but the site seems to be down.

Unless one reads between the lines.

And winning athletes and sports teams don't go to the white house due to 'scheduling conflicts'. And Amazon paid $75m for a Melania documentary because they saw real profit and need there. And Qatar bought Trump an airplane because it was important for his work. And everyone nominates him for a nobel prize because he ends wars and doesn't get into wars (we're just in a special military operation atm).

Of course not . absolutely definitely nothing to do with the mad king (who is great and handsome)

Would it count as a "political reason" if their risk management calculations crossed a threshold where it's worth it to move the gold back? I imagine such calculations are done and revised all the time and account for the perceived stability and reliability of a country.

which can be the difference between losing that entire amount or gaining it, and in this situation with this America, this is a big win if they manage to get it back in fact, if it hasn't been stolen or sold already

From the full press release:

"In 2025 and at the start of 2026, while the volume of gold reserves remained unchanged, the Banque de France had to align a residual portion (5%) with technical guidelines, resulting in a significant realised currency gain. This exceptional foreign exchange income totalled EUR 11 billion for 2025."

-- the keyword here likely being "realized"

It's more of a loss for the USA, which IMO is the unwritten point of the article.

France upgraded their gold bars to a new standard and as they were doing that, gold has appreciated massively in price, so France has the new shiny easier to trade bars, and the USA has the old harder to trade bars.

As @somenameforme wrote:

[] they sold their 'non-standard' (seems to be bars below the modern purity standards) US reserves, and replaced them with new reserves purchased elsewhere which are now stored in France. As the price of gold continued to rise as they did this, they ended up making a bunch of dinero while also centralizing their reserves.

sounds like a gain to me.

Assets like this are one of the complexities in calculating national import and export figures.

For example, imagine there's some German-owned gold in a UK bank vault, the owners sell it to a UK broker who sells it to a Chinese investor? The physical bars don't move, but on paper it's been imported to the UK then exported.

But a lot of people looking at export figures are expecting to learn things about the manufacturing industry, and picturing exports as washing machines, cars and computer chips - which imply lots of well paid jobs for skilled labour. So the UK reports import/export figures with 'non-monetary gold' listed separately.

(The fact flows of gold are highly volatile allows a classic bit of political sleight-of-hand - if you include gold, UK exports are both up and down since Brexit, depending on the pair of dates you choose)

Thanks for sharing this little hidden gem!

This doesn't make sense. If they first sold the bars held in the US, then the gold prices rose, then they bought gold in Europe, how the hell did that amount to a capital gain of $15b? How exactly do prices rising over the course of the process lead to these $15b?

Did they buy before selling? Otherwise that doesn’t make sense.

Would be good to not depend on the US that much any longer, since they have proven to be such an unreliable "partner". Even in a non-Trump future one cannot rely upon some future election not resulting in some similar disaster. Better to pull out, before some hothead gets weird ideas about that gold.