During the Chinese New Year holiday, Katty Mao struggled to find buyers for 500 “investment-grade” copper bars she bought in January, when soaring gold and silver prices made the 1kg chunks of polished metal seem like a promising investment. “I know it was a bet,” said Mao, who paid 160 yuan (US$23) each for the bars. “But the fear of missing out outweighed [any concerns].” Over the past two weeks, the advice Mao heard most often was to sell her bars to a scrap-metal dealer. The resident of Shenzhen, in the southern province of Guangdong, was not the only one caught up in a brief speculative frenzy over the ... (full story)