Armoured trucks leave NYC ‘loaded with gold’

So many investors have turned to gold during the recession that the HSBC bank on New York’s Fifth Avenue cannot cope with the amount of bullion being kept in its vaults, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal today. As a result, fleets of armoured security trucks have been leaving Manhattan, loaded with gold bars and coins for safe-keeping elsewhere.

HSBC refused to comment to the WSJ about this reverse gold rush because of "security concerns". But sources have told the paper that owners of vaults and warehouses across the United States have had to jump to action after HSBC issued an edict that it wanted retail investors to remove their bullion to make space for big institutional customers.

"I have never seen any relocation like this," Jonathan Potts, managing director of FideliTrade, owner of the Delaware Depository warehouses in Wilmington, Delaware, told the WSJ.

The problem is that many customers who would once have traded in gold contracts now want to take hold of the precious metal physically, whether in bars or coins. And it's not something you keep under the mattress.

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