At the Chong Kee Gold shop near Hong Kong\u2019s central business district, around 50 people queued outside the store with gold bullion, bracelets, necklaces and other jewellery, seeking to take advantage of prices that have soared 50pc this year.<\/p>\n
Theres Lam, a lawyer in line outside the shop, said she was selling gold she had been hoarding for 20 years, a mix of bullion and bracelets that she kept in a tote bag. She planned to sell several small 5-tael (6-ounce) gold bars, worth nearly HK$222,000 (\u20ac24,600) each.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very good time to sell. I\u2019ve kept this gold for nearly 20 years now,\u201d Ms Lam said.<\/p>\n
She would make many times her initial investment, she said, and planned on selling only a portion of her holdings, betting on gold prices rising even more.<\/p>\n
\u201cGold is a very safe investment for me in these uncertain times,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s solid and you can hold it forever. It maintains its value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gold surged past the $4,000 (\u20ac3,400) an ounce level for the first time on Wednesday, building on a record-breaking rally as broad geopolitical and economic uncertainty sent investors flocking to the safe-haven asset.<\/p>\n
Traditionally seen as a store of value during times of instability, gold is one of the best-performing assets of the year.<\/p>\n
At a gold market in Shanghai this week, store managers and shop assistants said more consumers were buying gold than selling it, with many confident the price will continue to rise.<\/p>\n
Most transactions were trade-ins, though, as customers looked to exchange older-style jewellery for newer designs, the shopkeepers and staff said.<\/p>\n
Chong Kee, a Hong Kong shop known for offering attractive gold buyback rates, stopped a ticketing system on Thursday afternoon when a 300-person quota had already been met.<\/p>\n
At the back of the shop, a man with a blowtorch shot scorching flames over gold items, testing their purity.<\/p>\n
Terence Hung, a 34-year-old father who works in construction, said he cashed out around 400 grams of family gold, including some gold ornaments given to his son when he turned one month old.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to emigrate soon, so this is a great time to sell… to get some extra money for our new life,\u201d he said, flanked by his wife and son, with whom he planned to move to Scotland. He received around HK$430,000 for the gold, making more money from Chong Kee than other retailers, he said.<\/p>\n
Inside the gold shop, the harried proprietor \u2013 who impatiently gave only his surname Chong \u2013 weighed gold items on a scale and dished out wads of cash to customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s extremely busy. Demand has been very, very high,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople just want to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the Chong Kee Gold shop near Hong Kong\u2019s central business district, around 50 people queued outside the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,898],"class_list":{"0":"post-74161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-latest-news-ticker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}