More Reflections From Hong Kong

It’s past midnight on Sunday as I write this.

I just came back from a wedding banquet of my wife’s cousin.

Here’s a pic of the celebrations:

The reason why I’m writing now instead of heading to bed is because I’m still feeling quite pumped.

Not only as a result of the celebration, but also because of the conversation I had with the taxi driver on the way home.

The taxi ride was a chance encounter. I initially thought of taking the bus home. It would’ve taken almost an hour to travel from East Kowloon to Tuen Mun in the western extremity of Hong Kong, where my family is staying.

As it was 11pm at night, my wife — Cindy — and my sister in-law were feeling pretty tired. Cyrus was about to drift off and needed Cindy to carry him. Getting back ASAP was the priority, even if it was going to cost a lot more.

In hindsight, I think it was a great decision because there’s a great story that came out of it!

More than just a taxi trip!

For the first third of the trip, I was focusing on the surroundings and reminiscing on past memories.

As an aside, the wedding venue was a stone’s throw away from where my grandparents lived when I was a child.

Things have changed a lot since, as is the case with most of Hong Kong.

Here’s a photo of that neighbourhood in the early evening:

There’s a modern shopping mall a block away from where I took the photo. But you can see some of the older style residential blocks that were there back in the day.

Anyway, back to the story.

As the taxi zipped past West Kowloon, I decided to strike up a conversation with the taxi driver about how the roads in Hong Kong are now so convenient that our taxi trip would likely take 60% of the time taken 10 or 20 years ago.

That resonated with the driver.

For the next 25 minutes, we had a good conversation about what’s happening in Hong Kong. We mused over the impressive development of the infrastructure in Hong Kong, the budget surplus of the Hong Kong government that allowed this to occur, and our perspective on the Hong Kong Administrative Government.

Interestingly, the taxi driver shared his frustration about how Hong Kong has degenerated due to what he believes is maladministration by the incumbent authority.

I was in the mood for it. As we continued, our conversation steered towards how China has lurched between implementing economic reform and centralised governing, and how that has made Hong Kong what it is today.

I’ll try not to get too political here, but let me provide some context.

For many years, Hong Kong has been the type of society that China had aspired to be. It’s economically vibrant, culturally functional and the Western world considers Hong Kong the gateway to doing business with China.

That’s at least before the societal and political tensions breaking out in 2014 and to a greater degree in 2019.

On top of that, the extended lockdowns, the implementation of the National Security Law by the Special Administrative Government and the strengthening of the US dollar following the US Federal Reserve raising the interest rate, led to Hong Kong experiencing significant setbacks.

So I can understand why the driver was frustrated. The society he lives in risks degenerating before his very eyes.

A chance to ‘evangelise’ the goodness of gold

Now some of you are aware how I like to go down rabbit holes and speculate over why certain things happen. Indeed, I could’ve steered our conversation to theorising how bad society could go and the doom we’re about to face.

However, this was a short taxi trip and I didn’t want to waste it hand-wringing over the uncertainty of the future.

So, I decided to take the opportunity to ask the taxi driver what he thought about gold.

He was aware that the price of gold has been rising.

I noted that gold has risen in US dollars to near the all-time record high, US$2,071 an ounce, last Friday in US trading.

He noted gold has continued to increase and wondered whether there was any point in buying.

This gave me the perfect chance to ‘preach’ the benefits of gold being an effective hedge against global and societal chaos, and how it retains purchasing power.

I then remarked how gold had risen some 80% since my wife and I married six years ago (check the prices!) and owning some gold afforded us peace of mind, since we could preserve our purchasing power with some of our wealth.

I wish I could introduce him to ‘The Ultimate Australian Gold Game Plan’!

Nonetheless, I was glad to have taken that taxi trip and enjoyed the exchange with this driver…

It’s my hope that he takes to heart what we discussed.

The general public’s increasing curiosity on gold…is the tide turning?

Now, this gentleman wasn’t the only one I encountered on this trip who asked me about gold.

A few of my relatives have also asked for my thoughts on the price of gold and what form of gold to buy.

What I take away from this (and you should too) is that gold is now gaining interest among the general public. They may not have had much interest in gold in the past few years, but they’re now aware that gold has steadily increased in price.

Some are asking if it’s time to buy.

The good news is that we have moved ahead of the masses!

Yes, you may be occasionally second-guessing whether you’ve made the right decision, especially given gold stocks have delivered mixed results in the past three years.

But if there’s anything you can take away from my update today, I can assure you that the public is setting their sights more on gold. And with gold trading at a whisker away from the US dollar record high, expect that there’s money ready to pile into this space if gold continues to rise.

And that could set up for the massive gold stock rally we’ve been waiting long and hard for.

The signs are clearer with each day!

I’ll leave it here for today. Take care and enjoy the week ahead.

God bless,

Brian Chu,
Editor, Australian Gold Report and Gold Stock Pro