When gold prices spike 12% and then crater by the same amount within a day and a half, somebody’s going to get a phone call from risk management. In China, that phone call turned into a full-scale crackdown on retail precious metals trading.
Several of China’s largest banks have moved to restrict how everyday investors trade gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange. The measures range from freezing new account openings to purging dormant margin accounts to jacking up collateral requirements.
What happened and who’s involved
The trigger was a wild January. Gold prices surged past $5,600 per ounce on January 29, 2026, then proceeded to lose more than 12% of that value in roughly 30 hours.
The Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) was among the first to act, suspending new individual SGE agency business starting January 12, even before the late-January spike. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) had already begun cleaning up inactive margin accounts back on December 19, 2025, suggesting the banks saw warning signs well ahead of the fireworks.
