Asia | Sticks and carats

The biggest bugs in the new gold rush are Asian

Wall Street is loading up on bullion. So are people in China and India

Indian women try on gold ornaments at a jewellery shop in Bangalore, India.
Photograph: Shutterstock
|MUMBAI AND SINGAPORE

Gold was already on a tear when President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on much of the world earlier this month, briefly sending the price of the metal to an all-time high of $3,166 per troy ounce, up 17.4% from the day of his inauguration. On April 11th it surged past $3,200. In one part of the world, however, that has hardly curbed consumers’ enthusiasm. “Rising gold prices stopping your wedding jewellery purchase?” asks a sign outside the downtown Mumbai branch of Tanishq, India’s biggest jewellery retailer. “Pay nothing for your dream,” it declares, advertising a “festival of exchange” to trade in old jewellery for new.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Sticks and carats”

From the April 19th 2025 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition
Illuminated crosses are displayed above a church, before the city skyline of Seoul, South Korea.

Why Christianity is taking an Asian turn

Believers have clout in South Korea, the Philippines, Japan and beyond

Office goers walk past the Bombay Stock Exchange building in Mumbai

Indians are losing big on the stockmarket

The middle-class enthusiasm for derivatives is a relatively new phenomenon


A person seen holding a flag on the occasion of the 134th birth anniversary of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar at Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal, sector 95, in Noida, India.

Why Narendra Modi has embraced an anti-caste icon

B.R. Ambedkar dedicated his life to challenging Hinduism


Where new talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un might go

A crisis is more likely than a genuine breakthrough

Japan faces a reckoning over rice

A crisis over its staple reveals cracks in the country’s food system