Gold’s Plunge Turns New York’s Diamond District Upside Down

New Liberty Loans Pawn Shop owner Roni Rubinov quoted in a Wall Street Journal article about the fluctuating price of gold.

April 15, 2013

“Few businesses have been impacted more by gold’s rollercoaster price ride in recent years than the 2,600 independent firms jammed into New York’s bustling Diamond District.

And since Friday, with the international price of gold falling more in dollar terms than in any previous two-day period since at least 1974, the activity on this crowded strip on 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues has gotten a little crazier. Gold dealers and their customers, accustomed to buying and selling according to the so-called “London PM fix” — the second of two daily benchmark prices set by a group of London bankers — had to adjust their reference prices by the minute as a plunging real-time market left them exposed to losses.

Roni Rubinov, proprietor of New York Gold & Silver Refiners, was forced to turn away one regular customer who’d come in toting a plastic bag of gold rings, necklaces and watches. The trading price was then at $1,370 per ounce, $25 less than the London fix, on which he had based his own delivery commitments for the day to larger wholesale refiners. By the end of trading Monday, the front-month April contract had settled on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange at $1,360.60 an ounce, down 9.4% on the day to mark a 13% decline in two days.”

Read more here: Wall Street Journal