Legal gold trading floors shut down, illegal floors open

All the gold trading floors have been forced to shut down since March 2010 as per the instruction by the State Bank of Vietnam. However, the demand for making transactions remains high which explains why many illegal trading floors have been set up.

Maybe the investors do not want to forget their “golden age” when they made gold transactions on accounts and earned fat profits. Therefore, they decide to go to illegal gold trading floors to continue making transactions. However, the international gold price fluctuations have dealt a strong blow on many investors.

Where there is demand, there is also supply

It is now easy to find on Internet the websites that allow to make gold transactions on accounts. Via the websites, investors can watch the price performance in the world market to decide what to do: either they buy gold and sell later when the prices go up, or sell gold first and then try to buy back when the prices go down.

Making transactions this way is now not accepted by the Vietnamese laws. Therefore, these are called “illegal gold trading floors.”

Unlike 2009, no investor goes to real gold trading floor nowadays, because trading floors are not allowed to operate. Therefore, companies do not set up open trading floors, but only set up small offices. The things that investors have to do is to download necessary software pieces to their computers and then carry out transactions on Internet. In order to maintain the active status of the gold accounts, investors just need to pay in money into the bank accounts of the companies.

As such, though the State has forced the operation of gold trading floors since 2010, gold trading floors still have been existing. The problem is that since the trading floors are illegal, investors’ benefits cannot be protected by the laws, and in case of dispute, they would be put at a disadvantage.

Only 10 percent of investors make profits

The investors who make transactions on illegal gold trading floors are called the ones, who “want to burn their money,” because everyone understands well that they do not have big opportunities to make profits.

On the last few days, August 8-9, when the gold prices went up and down regularly, the café near Tran Nhan Tong Street, the gold shop street in Hanoi, received a lot of visitors. They came here just to listen for the news and make timely decisions: buying gold when the prices went down, and selling when the prices went up for profits. Many of the investors could earn big money thanks to the big fluctuations of the gold prices.

However, many other investors suffered heavily in the last price fluctuation. “ND”, an investor, said that when the world price climbed to 1600 dollars per oz, she decided to sell gold. However, the price later did not go down as expected, but kept rising. The price soared by 100 dong per oz on some days, which forced her to pay in more money into the account to maintain the active status of the accounts.

However, ND finally decided to buy gold to stop loss when the price was at 1750 dollars per oz, accepting a big loss. D said that she has stopped making transactions to wait for the prices to get stabilized, because she has been shocked with the latest unsuccessful deal.

An analysis director of a securities company related that he has received a lot of calls these days from many people who ask for his advices after they had incurred big losses.

He said that it would not be a surprise at all if the number of people who take losses is higher than the number of people who make profits. In general, only 10 percent of investors make profits, while the other 90 percent take losses, bigger or smaller.

Why do people still want to make gold transactions though they only can see little opportunities, then? The analyst said that a lot of investors want to try their luck, especially when they are offered very favorable conditions. Investors just need small sums of money, while they can borrow the money much bigger than the money they have, to make investments. - TBKTSG

Tags: vietnam gold, Vietnam gold market, Vietnam gold prices