Hong Kong revives trade in gold futures
Posted on 03 July 2008 with no comments from readers
The Hong Kong Futures Exchange is reintroducing gold futures trading on its futures exchange starting October 20. This follows the decision by the Shanghai Futures Exchange, one of China’s major futures trading venues, to introduce gold futures trading earlier this year.
Both moves are highly bullish for gold which touched $950 an ounce again this week for the first time since its March all-time high.
From 2000 to 2006, China was the world’s fourth largest gold producer. But China became the world’s biggest producer of gold last year and is poised to remain as the leading gold producer with output reaching 300 tons, according to the China Gold Association.
Hong Kong had a prosperous goods futures market in the 1970s. But the rise of the financial market in the 1980s and 1990s made equity indices the only products that could be traded in its futures market. The rapid expansion of China has pushed Hong Kong, a traditional financial hub, to find ways to capture the benefits of this growth.
At the Shanghai Futures Exchange, which lists metals such as gold, copper and zinc, trading volumes for the first six months of the year totaled 14 trillion yuan, up 36 percent. Now Hong Kong will see if it can attract a similar boom in gold futures trading. This just has to be good for investment demand for the yellow metal.
no Comments posted by readers:
So, you are parking your money in gold.
That means you can’t find value in companies and corporations, presumably because oil manipulation makes work less efficient at generating money.
Well, that leaves people like me unable to resist biting through the leash. Is anyone here willing to invest $20,000 into a prototype electric mini for the local market?
I could do this. I found an electrical engineer who swears he can make the oscillator I need to turn power from a lithium-ion battery and a solar cell into the the ramped up current that would drive a simple combination motor into a motor/regenerative-braking system that works with modern highways.
Between me, a drag-racer who works with nitromethane and advanced braking, and an ex-soldier electrical engineer who made solid-state night-vision devices for the U.S. Army in cryo-tanks, I think it could be done.
Just asking.