Gold investors had high hopes for China, believing not only that its emerging middle class would be big buyers of the precious metal, but that the emerging superpower was quietly stockpiling its own version of Fort Knox in the vaults of the People’s Bank of China in Beijing.

But an announcement last week shattered that illusion. China’s central bank had bought only 604 tonnes of gold over the past six years — a sizeable chunk but nothing like the predictions of at least three times that amount that had been believed by many in the market.

The revelation that the amount of gold China’s slowing economy holds had actually fallen relative to its foreign reserves triggered an aggressive sell-off when markets reopened on Monday. For the pension funds, university endowments and savers who have all bought the metal in the past decade, as prices marched towards $2,000 a troy ounce in 2011, it may have been the moment when gold finally lost its charm.