China buying up gold ‘like it’s cheap cabbage’

As Chinese take up a big position on gold, COMEX commodity speculator positions begin to surge

Ben Traynor
Commodity Online
February 1, 2012

The spot market price of buying Gold climbed to $1728 an ounce Monday morning London time – a slight drop from last week’s close – while stock markets, commodities and the Euro all fell and government bond prices rose as European leaders met for their latest summit in Brussels.

The cost of buying Silver fell to $33.08 at one point – a 2.6% drop from where it ended last week.

Gold fell as low as $1718 per ounce Monday morning, dropping steadily during Asian trading, though this represented a loss of only 1% on Friday’s closing price.

CHINA

“Everybody seemed to be expecting profit taking out of Shanghai after the two Chinese bourses came back online,” said one Hong Kong dealer.

“As far as we can see, there wasn’t much of that.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

During last week’s Lunar New Year holiday, China saw a “gold rush”, with consumers spending more on buying gold than during the 2011 festival, according to a China Daily report.

“People seem crazy about gold, snatching it up more like a cheap cabbage than such a precious metal,” it quotes Beijing resident Miao Miao.

The value of sales at two of Beijing’s top gold retailers, Caibai and Guohua, reportedly hit 600 million Yuan ($95.28 million) – a 49.7% rise on last year’s sales, almost 50% increase in purchases! The gold price in Dollars meantime rose around 25% over the same period.

The Yuan also appreciated against the Dollar over that time, gaining around 3.6%, which implies a rise in Chinese domestic gold prices of around 20%.

See full story here

This article was posted: Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 9:00 am

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