Then they made money thanks to gold prices fluctuating, not thanks to gold prices rising?

And how does a 10% market shift lead to gaining $15b, roughly the value of 100 tons of gold, from the sale and re-purchase of 129 tons of gold?

This math ain't mathing.

It's more that the english ain't parsing, for some at least.

The mining.com quote is classic weasel phrasing, seemingly meaningful yet disturbingly ambiguous:

  Due to rising gold prices, the move helped the bank to generate a capital gain of 13 billion euros ($15 billion), bringing it to a net profit of 8.1 billion euros for the 2025 financial year after a net loss of 7.7 billion euros in 2024.

Just as, say, one guy helped four others push a car back up on the road.

We've been given, accurately or not .. likely true, figures on how the bank did over a period, we've also been told the gold movements helped with that ... so they almost certainly kicked in at least $1.

Other costs? Deviations in the actual figures from the estimates we're using here? 100 is not a million miles away from 129.