Crazy gold prices shatter the middle-class "dream of getting rich"

凤凰WEEKLY

2024-07-09 08:30Posted on the official account of Beijing Phoenix WEEKLY

Author / Octopus

Editor/Yan Ruyi

Rise up up slight rise up slight rise up slight rise up rise and fall ......

For most of the year, the price of gold has been like a roller coaster on the top of a mountain.

On June 26, after three consecutive declines, spot gold prices hit their lowest price since June.

However, gold jewellery consumers in the market are not satisfied with the decline in gold prices.

"年涨200,日跌20";

"After falling for a long time, it is still close to 560".

On this day, the domestic gold price was reported at 549 yuan / gram, but the gold price of jewelry in most gold stores was still above 710 yuan.

On July 3, the international gold price rose again, up more than 1.5%.

Curiously, despite the high price of gold, news came from the market one after another:

A gold shop went out of business.

The faster the price of gold rises, the more ruthless the closure of gold stores

The news of the closure of the gold store came one after another.

On June 21, the business of 5 Chow Tai Survival Gold in Xinxiang, Henan Province exploded.

More than 200 consumers deposited gold and money in these stores, with gold depositing maturities ranging from six months, one year and two years.

According to reports, five gold shops suddenly closed at the same time half a month ago, and the amount involved in the case is conservatively estimated to be millions of yuan.

Just over 20 days ago, Chow Tai Fook was also deeply involved in a work stoppage.

At the beginning of June, #周大福深圳工厂停工停产#登上热搜, Weibo alone received 200 million views on a social platform.

According to the screenshot on the Internet, Shenzhen Chow Tai Fook Jewelry Manufacturing Co., Ltd. issued a notice of suspension of work on May 29. The notice said:

The company's manufacturing business began to stop production on June 1, and employees in the manufacturing department began to take a holiday to work.

Since July 1, the company has paid living expenses to employees at a rate of 1,888 yuan per month.

For a time, rumors of "Chow Tai Fook stopped work and production" and "Chow Tai Fook went out of business" drifted in every corner of the Internet.

Chow Tai Fook had to come forward to refute the rumors, saying that "this shutdown is only to relocate part of the production department of the Shenzhen factory to the Shunde factory in Guangdong."

It's no wonder that netizens listen to the wind and rain, in the past two months, there has been too much news about the closure of gold stores.

In March, a gold store in Shuangjing R&F City, Chaoyang District, Beijing, with the "China Gold" brand on it, closed down, and 50 million yuan worth of gold disappeared.

This store has been open for 14 years, with a total of 3,000 square meters on two floors, and used to be known as "the largest single store area".

During the same period, all six stores of Shandong Gold in Beijing were closed, and the value of gold stored in the stores by consumers was as high as 400 million.

Online gold stores such as Huanxi Liangyuan, Jin Youbei, Star Love You, and Luanna also frequently have negative news about refusing to ship, selling fake gold, and missing catties and pounds.

By the end of March, some consumers found that all the above gold stores had been closed.

The retail market is full of gold stores, and the wholesale market is not peaceful.

Shenzhen Shuibei gold market is rich in rumors of "fleeing with gold".

An article titled "The Realistic Version of the "Gold Robbery": After the Gold Price Soared, the Gold Shop Owner Went Bankrupt and Ran Away" once wrote:

In January, some Shuibei merchants borrowed gold jewelry from more than 60 jewelers, and ran away with nearly 10 million yuan worth of yellow finance into gold bars, leaving only a sentence of "I'm sorry, brother" to their peers on WeChat;

In April, there was a rumor that "the owner of a gold shop ran away with 400 kilograms of gold raw materials, and the amount involved was as high as 200 million yuan".

Although the news was later confirmed to be a rumor, the owner of the store only had his bank card locked and did not run away.

But the gold market has long been in the limelight, and the slightest disturbance will be questioned as a precursor to running away.

This is undoubtedly counter-intuitive.

For a long time, there has been a simple truth in the gold market - "buy up, not buy down". But when gold repeatedly broke through record highs, people found that:

The faster the price of gold rises, the more news there is about the closure of gold stores.

700 yuan/gram of gold jewelry, no one buys it

Back last year, the "golden blood" of young people had just awakened, and the gold price at that time had not yet broken through the 500 mark.

At that time, the news about gold was still crowded with water shells by tourists, and they were crazy to buy gold jewelry.

However, after the gold price rose for half a year, in the face of the gold price of 715 yuan/gram at every turn, even the "three golds" just needed for marriage were about to be cut off by young couples.

After wandering around the gold shop for a long time and discovering that the money that could have bought 70 grams of gold is now only enough to buy 50 grams of gold jewelry, the young couple preparing for marriage began to consider giving up the three gold and directly discounting it.

It is no exaggeration to say that the price of gold is "dissuading" young people who are preparing for marriage.

Yes, after the gold jewelry broke through 700 yuan/gram, no one bought it.

According to Chow Tai Fook's unaudited key operating data for the three months ended March 31:

Same-store sales in the Mainland Jewellery Setting, Platinum and Karat Gold Jewellery categories decreased by 19.5%;

Same-store sales in Hong Kong and Macau in the Jewellery Setting, Platinum and Gold Jewellery categories decreased by 27.2% during the quarter.

According to CCTV News, during this year's May Day holiday, the sales of a gold merchant in Shuibei fell by nearly 40%-50% compared with the same period last year.

In the past, gold jewelry wholesalers came to Shuibei to buy goods, and they took more than a dozen kilograms casually. But now, a kilogram or two of gold has to be carefully selected.

Gold shop owners have complained on social media that business is difficult to do.

The topic #Gold skyrocketed, and the owners of gold shops did not dare to buy it# and even ranked fourth in the hot search.

The business logic of a jewelry gold store is actually very simple:

Merchants buy gold and then earn processing fees.

The business is far from profitable.

Zhou Qi, the boss of Shuibei's business, once revealed in an interview with the media: "Shuibei uses the average price of the market plus 1 yuan, and then calculates the manual fee to sell gold", which can be regarded as a typical labor-intensive industry.

The profit on the retail side is more than that of the wholesale market.

The gold price of most gold brands will be 20%-30% higher than the international gold price, and there will be an additional processing fee.

For jewelry stores, gold is the raw material.

It's as simple as the logic that you need flour to make bread and coffee beans to make coffee.

After the price of raw materials increased, the price of goods had to rise.

If the price of gold only rises slightly, then consumers can still be said to be investing in jewelry, but after rising to 700, the price of gold has obviously exceeded consumers' expectations, and sales have fallen off a cliff.

When it comes to buying gold, consumers always have a scale in their hearts.

The price of gold rises above 700, and it needs to wait.

Gold prices are starting to fall, and we have to wait and see.

Headlines published a survey on May 29 titled "How Would You Choose When Gold Prices Soar", and a total of 23,000 people voted.

Fewer than 2,000 people chose to buy gold immediately.

On that day, the domestic gold price was reported at 555.5 yuan/gram, and the gold price of Chinese gold was 698 yuan/gram.

With fewer consumers, gold jewellery dealers are naturally more cautious.

Shuibei's gold jewellery factories, due to cost control issues, usually do not hoard gold, but "borrow" from upstream according to market demand, and pay a certain amount of interest.

If there is a loan, there must be repayment, and the loan and repayment are all equal weight gold, and the cash settlement must be according to the current price.

Assuming that the gold price is 500 at the time of borrowing, and it rises to 510 the next day, the factory will have to bear the loss caused by the price increase. As a result, many factories have chosen to temporarily shut down.

The owners of the Shuibei wholesale market purchase gold raw materials, and there is also a model called "no pricing".

Merchants book gold materials with suppliers, pay a certain percentage of the payment and management fee when they get the goods, and then make the final settlement according to the real-time gold price within the agreed time after the transaction is completed.

This means that once the price of gold rises, merchants will have to pay the difference out of their own pockets.

If the gold price is 500 yuan/gram when borrowing, and it is sold according to the pricing model of Shuibei "the market price plus 1 piece, and then the processing fee is charged", the selling price is 505 yuan/gram, and the settlement is agreed to be settled after 1 month, but the gold price rises to 600 after 1 month, then when repaying, the borrower will have to paste the price difference of 95 yuan.

The more this gold is sold, the more it loses.

The gold business is not as easy to do as expected

Gold is a special commodity.

Not only decorations, but also investment goods.

In March, the gold price of AU9999 on the Shanghai Gold Exchange rose by 10%, and as of April, the jewelry gold of many domestic gold brands also exceeded 700 yuan/gram.

In a time when gold is going crazy, time is money.

In early April, the Beijing News interviewed a consumer who sold gold, and when he called an offline gold store, the price of gold was still 528 yuan per gram.

After arriving at the store, the recycling price rose to 532.5 yuan/gram.

Such huge profits have made gold a popular investment in the past six months.

A post-85 lady in Hangzhou has sold more than 600,000 shares to buy gold bars in the past six months.

According to media reports, in early March, someone sold 6kg of gold bars at a gold recycling company in Hangzhou, realizing 2.89 million yuan, and the recycling price at that time was about 482 yuan/gram.

Just a week later, the gold recycling price reached 505 yuan/gram.

In just 7 days, I earned 140,000 less.

Ordinary young people who do not have a large amount of gold and huge sums of money in their hands also began to be popular to save gold beans as early as a year ago.

1 gram of gold beans each, there is no manual fee, but it is consistent with the gold price of jewelry.

Although it is much higher than the market price, it is also seen by young people as a means of fighting inflation and forcing savings.

In the context of the overall sharp rise in gold prices, everyone was keen to hoard gold in the early stage.

But as soon as the market assesses that the price of gold has risen to the end and has a slight downward trend, the gold market starts to come alive.

Some people buy at a low price, and some people hurry up to sell gold.

Whether buying or selling gold, the ubiquitous gold shops are the preferred trading places for many consumers.

Gold is a special commodity, and bulk purchases require a lot of capital. In order to alleviate the financial pressure of purchasing gold, most gold stores have a gold custody business.

Generally speaking, gold stores will promise to give consumers 2.5% interest per year, which is much higher than the bank's interest rate of about 1.6% per year.

When China Gold Beijing R&F Plaza Store launched the gold custody business of "worry-free booking", it also promised:

On the basis of the real-time gold price, add 6 yuan (one-year);

And give away 2.5% of the weight of the gold bar purchased in pure gold.

For consumers who are not in a hurry to use their money, savings gold bars are a seemingly profitable deal.

All they have to do is buy gold, save money, and then sit on the interest.

The gold store takes the opportunity to sell a hundred gold, and a few million dollars of gold can generate tens or even hundreds of millions of profits.

像极了黄金产业链条的p2p。

In fact, as long as the gold store can pay investors interest on time, there will be no major problems with the leverage itself.

But the price of gold is rising day by day, and investors who store gold want to take advantage of the high price of gold to sell idle gold for cash.

As a result, a large number of investors decided to withdraw the gold stored in the store.

But in order to save costs, a gold store that only sells 100 gold, where can you get so much gold at once?

At the end of March and the beginning of April, the gold market was extremely hot.

In an interview with the media, a staff member of a gold factory said:

Gold hoarders "sell bags of gold".

It was also at this time that the gold store with the "China Gold" brand in Shuangjing R&F City, Chaoyang District, Beijing, and the six stores of Shandong Gold in Beijing closed one after another.

The cumulative losses of more than 400 million yuan did not cool the gold market.

Gold prices continued to fluctuate, and after returning to the number 5, investor enthusiasm rose instead of falling.

"AI sends out tens of thousands of reminders to rationally invest in gold a month" is also on the hot search.

In fact, as long as the price of gold in gold stores rises more than consumers expect, it will be difficult to maintain the gold savings business.

Even if investors don't rush to get their gold back, the gold store promises that the interest rate will rise after the gold price rises.

But if you can't sell the gold, the gold shop can't afford to pay the interest. Sooner or later, the gold savings business will also get out of the way.

It can be said that the rising gold price is like a mirror for the gold retail industry.

Once the gold price continues to rise and consumers start buying gold cautiously, the boom in the gold market cannot be sustained.

Leverage, sooner or later, will be played to a dead end.

The entrants are in a game of gold robbery.

If you want to be a survivor, you have to beat the time.

In the end, a bloody and tearful proverb was left in the market, which only applies to the period of gold's surge:

There is no skill in buying gold, it all depends on buying early.

Resources:

"The price of gold rose to 740 yuan, but Chow Tai Fook was not happy" Prism Tencent Xiaoman Studio

"The Realistic Version of the "Gold Robbery": After the Gold Price Soared, the Gold Store Owner Went Bankrupt and Ran Away" Microscopic story

"Gold prices rise, gold stores run away, who benefits?" Whale Merchant

"In the past two days, more people have sold gold bars", China News Weekly

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