Interesting e-mail received today from a Hong Kong Subscriber --
Mr. Russell, I think the following piece of information may be useful to you and your subscribers. I live in Hong Kong and over the past several days I have been trying to buy American Eagles gold coins. I have contracted a few banks here (HSBC, Citigroup, Merrill, Amer. Express, Bank of Amer.) and all of them refuse to sell gold coins. Their answer is "we stopped this service a few weeks ago and our stocks are finished."
I found this rather bizarre and I spoke with a banker in HSBC who I know personally. He confirmed (under strict confidence) that HSBC still had huge reserves of gold and that they had stopped selling these. What's more bizarre is the fact that HSBC confirmed that it would have no hesitation in buying gold coins from me, but it would not sell (because there is no supply!).
Anyway, I would be grateful if you could recommend a few gold dealers who would be able to ship my order to Hong Kong. Yours faithfully -----
Russell Comment -- I know that Hong Kong is ruled by China and China is a big buyer of gold and wants to up its reserves but anybody know anything about this|? My own dealer says he can buy all the gold coins he wants. As far as options on gold, the premiums have not gone up. What's happening in Hong Kong?
