Hong Kong residents hoping to cash in on a precious metals rally are buying up bars of silver as an alternative to gold that they say has become “too expensive” after reaching record highs.After a precious metals shop in Hong Kong’s central business district announced that hundreds of silver bars had sold out for the day on Wednesday, murmurs of disappointment rippled through a waiting queue.Despite increasing its supply to cater to strong demand, the store saw hundreds of bars snapped up in just over an hour.Retiree Ken Wong, 65, began queueing at the precious metals shop Lee Cheong at around 5 am and managed to buy five bars.He told AFP that buying silver offered him the chance to invest in a safe-haven asset quickly on the rise, whereas gold has become “too expensive”.Wong said that thanks to US President Donald Trump’s mercurial policies, he and many others have the opportunity to profit from the inflated prices of the precious metals.The price of gold surged to a record of more than $5,588 an ounce Thursday as investors sought safe places to put their money amid growing nervousness over rising global turmoil sparked by US policies.Silver also struck an all-time peak above $119 an ounce, and is up more than 60 percent this year, having surged more than 140 percent in 2025. Pakistani Meran Jawad waited in line outside the trader shop since around 6 am to purchase silver bars, which were in limited supply.”If you have silver or gold, it will be good for wealth,” the 38-year-old delivery driver told AFP, and the geopolitical impact brought by Trump was affecting “every person’s situation”.”Everything is expensive,” he said, adding that their salaries are not growing while the cost of living continues to rise.- ‘The real safeguard’ -Chen, a 40-year-old jewellery businessman based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, told AFP that his firm’s silver production sales so far this month were 10 times higher than in November.The company, which employs nearly 20 workers, has reduced its gold jewellery stock with orders increasingly shifting towards silver, mainly to wholesalers.”All of this hinges on market reactions… these developments are inextricably linked to the European and American markets, and Trump,” Chen said.Geopolitical tensions and rising inflation have driven the surge in precious metals investments, Samuel Tse, an economist at DBS Bank, told AFP. “Central banks are now diversifying their portfolio to gold,” Tse said, with “retail and institutional investors… allocating more assets into precious metals.” Outside another gold-buying shop, dozens also formed long lines, waiting to sell their precious jewellery. Vivian Lam, a finance worker in her 40s who calls gold a “scarce resource”, said she had not expected to see such a dramatic surge.She told AFP she saw people selling bullion bars several centimetres long to gold dealers when she was offloading her jewellery. Michael Ko, 55, stared at the fluctuating stock figures on his phone while waiting in line to sell the physical gold he had bought and stored in a home safe several years ago. A retiree from the investment industry, he said the rapid rise prompted him to take the profits to fund other opportunities. He told AFP that he purchased gold bars as it holds its value better. If political and economic crises “were to occur, it is the real safeguard”, he said. 

Gold prices soared to another fresh record above $5,500 Thursday, while oil advanced and stocks fell after Donald Trump ramped up geopolitical tensions with his threatened military strike on Iran.The surge in safe-haven precious metals also saw silver hit another peak and has also been helped by a softer dollar sparked by speculation that the US president is happy to see the world’s reserve currency weaken.An uneventful policy announcement by the Federal Reserve did little to inspire buying, though observers said traders are optimistic that interest rates will come down this year as Trump prepares to name his pick as the next governor.Bullion piled on more than $300 at one point to top out at $5,588.71 after the president said Tehran needed to negotiate a deal over its nuclear programme, which the West believes is aimed at making an atomic bomb.”Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS — one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.”The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again,” he added, referring to American strikes against Iranian targets in June.A US naval strike group that Trump described as an “armada” led by aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln is now lurking in Middle East waters, with the president saying it was “ready, willing and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary”.CNN reported that he was mulling an attack after nuclear talks failed to advance.Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned Wednesday its forces would respond immediately and forcefully to any US military operation — adding that its forces have their “fingers on the trigger” — but did not rule out a new nuclear deal.- ‘Inverse of confidence’ -Stephen Innes said the surge in gold indicated deeper structural concerns.”After blowing through $5,500 in early Asia, bullion is no longer trading like a commodity. It is trading like a referendum. Not on inflation. Not on rates. On trust,” he wrote.”Gold is the inverse of confidence. When belief in policy coherence weakens, gold ceases to behave like a hedge and instead acts as an alternative. That is what we are watching now. This is not fear of recession. There is doubt about fiat stewardship.”The rising tensions pushed oil prices up — with WTI at its highest since September and Brent at levels not seen since August — amid worries about supplies from the crude-rich region.Equity markets were down. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney and Seoul led losses.Jakarta tanked eight percent, extending Wednesday’s collapse that came after index compiler MSCI called on regulators to look into ownership concerns and said it would hold off adding Indonesian stocks to its indexes or increasing their weighting.The dollar remained under pressure against its peers, even after Treasury Secretary Bessent told CNBC that “the US always has a strong dollar policy”, a day after Trump appeared to welcome its recent weakness by saying it was “doing great”.The Fed’s latest policy meeting ended with little surprises as boss Jerome Powell said officials were keeping tabs on data.But Matthias Scheiber and Rushabh Amin at Allspring Global Investments said attention was now on who Trump would tap to take the helm when Powell steps down in May.”The big focus will remain on the announcement of the new Fed chair, with the race wide open though a general expectation of someone more dovish to succeed Jerome Powell,” they wrote in a commentary. “Governmental pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates will remain a continued theme this year.”- Key figures at around 0230 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.2 percent at 53,274.71 (break)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.2 percent at 27,764.65Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.2 percent at 4,144.25West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.9 percent at $63.79 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.8 percent at $68.95 per barrelDollar/yen: DOWN at 153.30 yen from 153.38 yen on WednesdayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.1957 from $1.1944Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3799 from $1.3797Euro/pound: UP at 86.66 pence from 86.56 penceNew York – Dow: FLAT at 49,015.60 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.5 percent at 10,154.43 (close)

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits Thursday, riding massive market demand for the memory chips that power artificial intelligence.A global frenzy to build AI data centres and develop the fast-evolving technology has sent orders for advanced high‑bandwidth memory microchips soaring.That is also pushing up prices for less flashy chips used in consumer electronics — threatening higher prices for phones, laptops and other devices worldwide.In the quarter to December 2025, Samsung said it saw “its highest-ever quarterly consolidated revenue at KRW 93.8 trillion (US$65.5 billion)”, a quarter-on-quarter increase of nine percent.”Operating profit was also an all-time high, at KRW 20.1 trillion,” the company said.The dazzling earnings came a day after a key competitor, South Korean chip giant SK hynix, said operating profit had doubled last year to a record high, also buoyed by the AI boom.The South Korean government has pledged to become one of the top three AI powers, behind the United States and China, with Samsung and SK hynix among the leading producers of high-performance memory.Samsung said Thursday it expects “AI and server demand to continue increasing, leading to more opportunities for structural growth”.Annual revenue stood at 333.6 trillion won, while operating profit came in at 43.6 trillion won. Sales for the division that oversees its semiconductor business rose 33 percent quarter-on-quarter.The company pointed to a $33.2 billion investment in chip production facilities — pledging to continue spending in “transitioning to advanced manufacturing processes and upgrading existing production lines to meet rising demand”.- ‘Clearly back’ – Major electronics manufacturers and industry analysts have warned that chipmakers focusing on AI sales will cause higher retail prices for consumer products across the board.This week US chip firm Micron said it was building a $24 billion plant in Singapore in response to AI-driven demand that has caused a global shortage of memory components.SK hynix announced Wednesday that its operating profit had doubled last year to a record 47.2 trillion won.The company’s shares have surged some 220 percent over the past six months, while Samsung Electronics has risen about 130 percent, part of a huge global tech rally fuelled by optimism over AI.Both companies are on the cusp of producing next-generation high-bandwidth “HBM4″ chips for AI data centres, with Samsung reportedly due to start making them in February.American chip giant Nvidia — now the world’s most valuable company — is expected to be one of Samsung’s customers for HBM4 chips.But Nvidia has reportedly allocated around 70 percent of its HBM4 demand to SK hynix for 2026, up from the market’s previous estimate of 50 percent.”Samsung is clearly back and we are expecting them to show a significant turnaround with HBM4 for Nvidia’s new products — helping them move past last year’s quality issues,” Hwang Min-seong, research director at market analysis firm Counterpoint, told AFP.But SK still “maintains a market lead in both quality and supply” of a number of key components, including Dynamic Random Access Memory chips used in AI servers, he said.SK also this week said it will set up an “AI solutions firm” in the United States, committing $10 billion and weighing investments in US companies.