Looking closer to home though, the shares of the various UK bookmakers are tempting but there are a few pitfalls. If England do not progress beyond the Group Stage then revenues will certainly be down. If England were to win the World Cup and Rooney were to pick up the Golden Boot, not an inconceivable combination, then the bookmakers could be facing some rather damaging payouts.

An Irish bookmaker like Paddy Power with less England specific exposure could be a less risky trade. Having said that Paddy Power also have a sports hedging business whereby a firm, eg a Furniture Company, offers its new clients a discount if England win the World Cup. The Furniture Company then hedges off that risk with Paddy Power. This additional exposure makes these particular Irish shares a less tempting proposition.

Elsewhere, the UK’s pub chains should experience reasonably brisk trade but again much of the upside could already be priced into the shares and there might be better value elsewhere.

The industry’s success has attracted the attention of the wider business community and Shields said that local entrepreneurs who, hitherto, had nothing to do with the gold mining industry and others who had more-or-less “retired” from mining are mulling millions of dollars of investment in the sector, while there is money to be made by importers of mining equipment. Some commercial banks too, appear to be softening their traditional reluctance to lend to the sector. “In terms of what gold has done and can continue to do for the economy there is a great deal of optimism,” Shields said.

All, however, does not glitter in the gold industry. High yield and rising world market prices have coincided with new challenges most of which are linked to an increasingly energetic environmental lobby that has taken aim at gold mining. Setting aside the impending ban on the export of mercury by both Europe and North America, the world’s leading producers of the commodity, the industry is caught firmly in what appears to be a more boisterous official insistence that it confirms to regulations that have to do mostly with environmentally responsible mining.