Is gold what’s going to save me from going down the tubes?
When times are bad, investors have traditionally sought refuge in gold. With bullion dealers reporting a surge in business, it seems that history is repeating itself. Prices are strong and gold is currently selling at around $930 an ounce. In March 2008, the gold price reached above $1000 for the first time.
Will the price of gold go higher?
Now one investment fund manager is saying, “Sometime this year, perhaps this spring, the gold price will rise as high as $1,600.” Could he be right?
Getting started
If you have absolutely no experience in investing in gold, apply for Online Payday Loans and search the internet for some good learning material. Gold is a wide and complicated subject and you should know a lot about it before you jump in and start buying.
The gold rush
One man has converted all his investments into gold. He explains:
“Over thousands of years gold has never reached zero. The price is a risk, but at the end of the day I will still have the same amount of gold. There are people who probably hold bank shares that would have been seen as conservative investments and you could question what they are going to be left with. I can sit at home and track my investment online.”
The gold that the man buys is kept in a vault in the bank. Commission fees are typically less than half of a percent, and insurance against theft is also a nominal amount.
Bunker mentality
Investing in gold does smack of bunker mentality but other investors are now following suit and bullion dealers reporting a sudden upswing in business. A British online gold broker in London, which allows clients to buy and sell certified gold held in vaults in London, Zurich and New York, report that they are currently opening an average of three times as many accounts a day compared to 6 months ago.
It holds its value
The CEO says the appeal of gold is its ability to hold its value over time, and it measures up well against inflation. “There is a story told about a Roman emperor who bought a suit of clothes thousands of years ago with an ounce of gold. Today that same ounce would be worth about $900, and that would again pay for a suit of clothes,” he says.
Gold is a long-term investment that comes into its own when times are bad, like the Great Depression and during the stagflation of the 1970s.
How do you buy gold?
Buying gold is very simple. There are basically four ways of buying gold:
- Gold Coins.
- Gold bars to take home.
- Gold bullion or bars held in escrow.
- Gold in the form of Exchange Traded Funds.
- Gold coins and gold bullion or bars one can purchase from dealers, auction houses or even from other collectors.
This poem by Thomas Hood (1799-1845) says it all:
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold
Molten, graven, hammered and rolled,
Heavy to get and light to hold,
Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled,
Gold is always a solid investment. The price of gold just hit over $1000 recently, which is a nearly all time high. If the price starts to fall, you might want to wait until it hits bottom if anyone is going to invest in gold. However, at $1,000 per troy ounce (an ounce, 1/16th of 1 lb.) that’s a spendy investment.
Wow, this post has some excellent points. Most of them I had never thought of before but they are very valid