A barometer of investors' sentiment on gold and silver in February hit the highest reading since the spring of 2013, an online platform said.

Private investors’ sentiment about holding gold and silver jumped in February to its highest level since spring 2013, as central bank money printing and cheaper metal prices lured buyers, according to the online precious metals exchange BullionVault.
 
The firm’s Gold Investor Index tracks the balance of investors starting or growing their gold holdings compared to those reducing or selling their holding completely. The index rose in February from a half-decade low of 50.5 to 54.4 – the highest level in 22 months, and the fastest increase since April 2013. The index peaked at 71.7 in September 2011.

BullionVault's 2014 sales stood at £341 million ($524 million). 

"Price dips continue to attract long-term investors. The more central banks push monetary policy into uncharted territory, the more people turn to gold and silver. With the European Central Bank now embarking on QE bond purchases, cash inflows from eurozone users of BullionVault have risen 34 per cent in 2015 to date from the same period last year. Now that Denmark and Sweden have also moved to negative interest rates, the first two months of 2015 saw more new BullionVault users from those two countries than in all of 2013 and 2014 combined,” said Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault.

"UK savers are also buying gold more heavily ahead of the election and the increasingly likely tumble in sterling assets. Amongst UK investors – who account for half of BullionVault's 55,000 users – the ratio of buyers to sellers leapt from below 1.0 in January to 3.10 last month," Ash said.

The firm said that the jump in its gold index came as the number of investors starting or adding to their gold holdings exceeded January's 10-month high, but the volume of investors cutting or exiting their holdings entirely – which was on a par with the number of buyers in January – fell by two-thirds.

BullionVault’s study into silver investing amongst its clients also showed a sharp rise in February, with silver sentiment reaching a four-month high of 54.8 from January's near-record low of 50.1 - this also marked the highest rise since April 2013.

The firm said that holdings of silver rose 10 tonnes in February to a new record of 502 tonnes, while users also added the most gold in a year, buying 0.3 tonnes net to take aggregate client gold property above 33.0 tonnes.

BullionVault draws on its own proprietary data to track private investor sentiment in physical bullion. The firms stated that its users own £840 million of gold and £173 million in physical silver.