唐华斑竹
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Bearish
In the spring of 2011, the international gold price fell to 210 yuan per gram. A friend of mine used all of his 210,000 yuan saved for his wedding to buy investment gold bars from China Construction Bank, totaling 1,000 grams. The bank's financial manager repeatedly emphasized that "gold is hard currency against inflation," so the gold bars were stored in a safe deposit box, with an annual storage fee of 0.5%.
On March 21, 2025, due to a sudden illness requiring funds, I contacted Chow Tai Fook and learned that the buyback price that day was 693 yuan per gram. After deducting the accumulated storage fee of 14,000 yuan, I actually received 679,000 yuan. On the surface, it appears that over 14 years, the value increased by 469,000 yuan, with an annualized return of about 6.5%. However, if I had chosen a five-year large denomination deposit with the bank (average annual interest rate of 3.5%) that year, the total principal and interest would have been about 337,000 yuan. Adding in the cumulative inflation rate of 60% over 14 years, the actual purchasing power turned out to be comparable to that of the gold returns.
Only when I held 670,000 yuan did I realize: the repurchase discount on gold consumed 23% of the apparent increase, and the storage costs ate up another 2% of the net earnings. What seems to preserve value in gold is actually difficult to withstand the superfluous issuance of currency and asset bubbles. When young people begin to hoard gold and news of central banks increasing their gold reserves becomes frequent, it feels even more that the so-called "hard currency" is just a leaf in the torrent of the times.
On March 21, 2025, due to a sudden illness requiring funds, I contacted Chow Tai Fook and learned that the buyback price that day was 693 yuan per gram. After deducting the accumulated storage fee of 14,000 yuan, I actually received 679,000 yuan. On the surface, it appears that over 14 years, the value increased by 469,000 yuan, with an annualized return of about 6.5%. However, if I had chosen a five-year large denomination deposit with the bank (average annual interest rate of 3.5%) that year, the total principal and interest would have been about 337,000 yuan. Adding in the cumulative inflation rate of 60% over 14 years, the actual purchasing power turned out to be comparable to that of the gold returns.
Only when I held 670,000 yuan did I realize: the repurchase discount on gold consumed 23% of the apparent increase, and the storage costs ate up another 2% of the net earnings. What seems to preserve value in gold is actually difficult to withstand the superfluous issuance of currency and asset bubbles. When young people begin to hoard gold and news of central banks increasing their gold reserves becomes frequent, it feels even more that the so-called "hard currency" is just a leaf in the torrent of the times.
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