Hong Kong billionaire put a quarter of his wealth in Gold

While many Western investors still lack exposure to precious metals, a Hong Kong billionaire has allocated a quarter of his wealth to gold and advises others to do the same.

Bloomberg described Cheah Cheng Hye as “the face of value investing” in Asia. Hye built his company, Value Partners Group, into a “multi-billion-dollar stock picking powerhouse.”

Value investing is a strategy that involves identifying undervalued investments based on fundamentals and holding them until the market catches up. Value investors try to determine the intrinsic value of an asset by evaluating its earnings and cash flow, balance sheet strength, competitive position in the market, and valuation metrics compared to other similar assets and historical trends.

According to the Bloomberg report, Hye now holds about 25 percent of his $1.4 billion personal wealth in gold. The former fund manager has upped his position from about 15 percent last year.

Hye told Bloomberg that he’s always included gold in his investment strategy.

“I was a very patient investor — I bought precious metals, didn’t trade them, and considered them part of my lifetime savings. Eventually, the whole thing became larger and larger.”

With gold gaining around 65 percent last year, it has earned plenty of time in the spotlight, but even so, most high-net-worth investors still hold very little of the yellow metal. This is particularly true in the West. According to the UBS Global Family Office Report 2025, the average allocation to gold and precious metals was 2 percent in 2024.
Retail investors in the West have even less exposure to gold – around 1 percent.

As Money Metals CEO Stefan Gleason recently noted, “Imagine if the percentage of Americans buying physical gold or silver went from just 1 percent to 2 percent. That's a 100 percent increase, a staggering amount of volume for dealers and mints to handle.”

In the early stages of this gold bull run, Asian investors drove the market, with North Americans largely sitting on the sidelines. It wasn’t until the last quarter of 2025 that North American investors began hopping in with both feet.

Like Morgan Stanley CIO Michael Wilson, Hye has spurned the traditional 60/40 portfolio and recommends a 60/20/20 portfolio with at least 20 percent allocated to precious metals instead of bonds, and he has put his money where his mouth is.

Hye told Bloomberg he began making small bets on precious metals in 2008, and his gold investing picked up speed about a decade later with large investments in physical gold ETFs. He said he’s gained around $251.1 million, a 167 percent increase.

A gold ETF is backed by a trust company that holds metal owned and stored by the trust. In most cases, investing in an ETF does not entitle you to any amount of physical gold. You own a share of the ETF, not gold itself. ETFs are a convenient way for investors to play the gold market, but owning ETF shares is not the same as holding physical gold.

Hye said he also bought physical bars and coins, along with mining stocks. He told Bloomberg that while he had plenty of success with ETFs, “For Asia-based investors, it is much preferable to buy physical gold rather than paper gold.”

Hye expressed concern about America’s weaponization of the dollar, telling Bloomberg the world is entering a period of massive “vault flight.” He said Asian families are moving more of their money back into their own region “to insulate themselves from U.S. sanctions or potential asset seizures.”

He said gold and silver are ideal ways to protect wealth because they don't come with counterparty risk. 

“If you have the physical gold in the warehouse or in your bank safe, nobody owes you anything.”

Since Wilson floated the 60/20/20 portfolio strategy, the idea seems to be picking up speed. While some may view the new model as a radical break from traditional portfolio strategy, Wisdom Tree analysts said it could be seen as “less a radical break than a quiet return to first principles: holding something that no one else owes you.”