Key Post Is gold a good investment?

Gold could go much higher. Imagine what gold would be tomorrow if Hurricane Irene had been a category 5!
 
What's to gold if you need the money

This may seem like a silly question. If the reasons touted tO buy gold such as currency collapse etc. If I have a gold asset in the form of a cert how can I utilise this? Who wants this? Who can buy it.
 
What to with gold if you need the money

This may seem like a silly question. If the reasons touted tO buy gold such as currency collapse etc materialise. If I have a gold asset in the form of a cert how can I utilise this? Who wants this? Who can buy it. Is the logic driving I'm walking around with a bag of gold coins?
 
The cert is only worth something if it is verifiably backed by something, and other people trust the backing
To plan for the eventuality that there is a total currency collapse you do not want certificates, but rather physical gold and silver.
 
I am a bit late to this game, but is it still advisable for buying physical gold and silver as a short term investment ie 3 years?

I would hate to change some of my income into silver and just miss out selling before it falls again. It took 20 years for gold to reach this point so thats along time to sit on it if it goes bad!
 
Gold ETFs (or to be more accurate gold ETCs - exchange-traded commodities) come in two forms. The first, and more frequent, is the ETC that is backed by gold bullion. The second is a gold ETC backed by a derivative or futures contract aimed at replicating the price of gold.

GLD, the first gold ETC to issued - by State Street in the US - is a physically backed gold ETC and uses HSBC to hold the gold (I believe); there is an annual audit. It is not the only way to hold gold but it is a safe way to own gold. Scare mongering about the safety of phyically-backed gold ETCs often overlooks these simple facts.

The perth mint gold certs sold by Goldcore in Ireland come with a guarantee from the Australian government. These certs are similar and even safer than physically backed gold ETCs. But the perth mint certs are more expensive to buy. Nonetheless, each to their own.

Rory Gillen
 
I have been using an Irish based company called Your Gold Fund and have so far used all three of their services - they actually sell gold bars (limited range but the most competitive rates that I could find... BY FAR) and I purchased several of these just to get a feel for the company.

I sold the bars back (always good to check that you can actually sell the gold you buy and not lose a fortune on the commission!) and now buy through their gold buyers account - www.yourgoldfund.com/Buy-Gold.php

I checked them out with the bars and did my research, they're an Irish company but with English history spanning over 30 years in the Industry and a massive turnover so they're not some new kid on the block having a crack at this. They also seem to sell in laymans terms - which works for me!

Is gold a good investment? I hope so! I'm not planning on selling anytime soon anyway!
 

I was reading earlier this week that gold will continue to advance because of Newtons Law - when something is moving in one direction it continues to do so until something stops it! And I don't think anything is going to divert the world economic turmoil anytime soon.

They also predict that China will increase its ownership of gold from just over 1000 tonnes to 8000 by 2020 on top of the fact that world pension funds currently only hold about 0.4% of their value in gold bullion - I'd say there's a decent argument that you're in time. So many people are looking to own gold as part of their pension now that really the interest in gold alone has a long way to go until its peaked.

Put it this way - how many people do you know that were affected by the property crash? Vs
how many people do you know that are invested in gold?

The so called 'bubbles' can't be compared (in my opinion ).

As I said in my earlier post I recommend www.yourgoldfund.com but do your research and figure out what you're looking for etc.
 
I like gold but I love silver.

Been slowly selling down the ETFs for the physical.

If the proverbial really does hit the roof you want to have your PM's in close proximity.

'I am convinced the whole derivatives market will cease to exit. Will become zero' Marc Faber.
 
Thanks for sharing this great information, i think it is too useful.
 
Don't know if this has been discussed previously, but what are the risks posed to private gold investors by the Central banks? Under what circumstances would Central Banks offload large gold holdongs? Why are some of them buying so much gold? Why are the Germans repatriating gold? And why are they making so much noise about it? I think understanding the motivations of these gargantuan gold-holders is vital for gold investors.
Any clever answers guys and girls?
 
Rory Gillen had a good article in the Irish Times during the week on gold. It is reproduced on his website

[broken link removed]
 

Ringledman, I don't like personizing this but I'm curious whether you've lost a fortune at this stage?

Since you posted the above, the US stock market will have to crash to half it's current value before an investor in this supposed "secular bear" market will be as poor as an investor in silver.

You know that some of these self-publicizing seers you seem to admire make a living by selling themselves and their opinions?

Marc Faber typically predicts one outcome as the "inevitable in the long term" (his claim that the US equity markets are doomed) while simultaneously predicting the opposite in the short term (in his own words - "U.S. equities may, for a while, actually do quite well"). Bingo; no matter what happens he can always claim to have demonstrated remarkable foresight.

Variants of this trick are also commonly used by "psychics" and other charlatans. I recommend Ian Rowland's book on cold reading for an introduction to how to appear to have amazing predictive powers without predicting anything at all.

For example, another classic technique used by the "psychic industry" which Faber employs is to make a dramatic claim about what will happen in the future without giving a specific time frame. "The whole derivatives market will cease to exit." - interesting but when will this actually happen Marc? Without this vital piece of information, he can never be proven wrong. Why would a market (the derivatives market) disappear suddenly after 2 and half thousand years of existence?

The guy is simply a peddler of cheap parlour tricks who makes his living selling his opinions, books and giving talks.

On the other hand, since you're a fan of silver, I presume you've been exposed to the opinions of Eric Sprott and/or his internet band of devotees? This guy shameless in another way; he has been able to sell units of his silver fund for above their net asset value, having convinced his followers that other forms of exposure to silver were dodgy in some way or another. Effectively he has made money selling people dollar bills for 1 dollar 20c.

I've probably drifted off track here - if a mod thinks it appropriate, maybe this reply should be move into a separate thread called "charlatanism in the investment industry" or something like that.
 

I subscribe to the diversification view and my overweight positions in Japan and defensive equities (which I have discussed for the last 3-4 years on here) have risen far higher to offset any recent fall in the silver price if you really want to know.

I view a portfolio as a whole. Short term individual moves in asset allocations within that portfolio are generally irrelevant. Gold and silver I view as an insurance policy or a hedge. A fall in a small part of the portfolio is hoped to correspond with a rise in the other asset classes within the portfolio.

Interesting to note that the high correlation amongst differing asset classes since the crisis has recently started to revert back to the more historical less correlation to uncorrelated position.

Gold and silver are volatile. 30-50% moves are common. What did gold fall in 2008? 30%?

Silver more so. It still remains 50% below a high it reached 33 years ago. What has inflation been over this period? 250-300%?

In terms of the question of physical or paper holdings, the reports over the past month have been nothing but a dumping of paper ETF/ETC metal holdings in favour of a huge surge in physical demand. Perhaps investors are waking up to the want of de-financialising their holdings.

In terms of the equities secular trend should we consider the general bullishness and fact that the FTSE for instance has today been on it's longest winning streak on record (see telegraph). A contrarian indicator perhaps? Time will tell. Despite the flood of money into the system most indicies remain below their peak of 2000.
 
is gold a good investment

most of the people advising the purchase of gold and other precious metals say it is a hedge against monetary armageddon of one sort or another.Maybe I am missing the point but surely the value of any asset is dependent on somebody wanting to buy it and having the wherewithall to do so. In the event of a meltdown even if we succeed in offloading our asset we will be paid in the very cash we abandoned.All seems a little pointless to me.
 
I agree with daraq and his comments with regard to commentators like marc faber, i think you are better off following the worlds top investors and finding out where they are investing, you can do this through websites like gurufocus.com, it mainly focusses on american investors like warren buffet, george soros, bill gates etc. You only find out 3-6 months later what investments they have made, but the best investors dont change their core holdings much. George soros has a lot of different investments and makes big changes regularly, however he had held the GLD gold ETF throughout 2012 and sold out of it completely last september, It was also a big position for him. The point is that this was known for several months before the recent sell off. This is what you need to be looking at real investors with real money not talking heads
 

You are missing one important point, gold is money, it is traded on the currency desks of the various exchanges. When the Zimbabwe Dollar collapsed people started using other currency, including gold. They did not exchange it for the Zimbabwe Dollar, which is simply no longer used.
 
We don't allow speculation about share prices, but people thinking of investing in gold should consider gold miners as an alternative.

Rory Gillen has an article on the topic here:

[broken link removed]

Brendan
 
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