LONDON (Scrap Register): Investment in precious-metals exchange-traded products cooled in April but showed signs of picking up again in May, said Barclays.

The bank’s statistics were included in a report on overall commodity investment inflows, which Barclays said was the strongest in the first four months of 2016 since 2011, with gold one of the biggest beneficiaries.

In April, precious metals ETPs received $0.61 billion of inflows, much lower than $4.3 billion March inflows and average monthly flows of $5 billion in the first quarter.

“Gold prices traded within a tight range in April and investors largely stayed on sidelines regarding to ETP investments,” analysts at Barclays addea. “However, there are signs of a pick-up in gold activities in May.” Between May 1 and 20, another 86.2 tons of gold was purchased by physical backed ETPs.”

“This is sharply higher than 5.6 tons in April and is on par with levels seen in March. There are inflows into physical gold ETPs every single trading day during first 20 days of May, despite higher expectations of a Fed June hike and weaker gold prices,” Barclays added.