Buying Gold Coins: Is it a good time to do it?
More and more, I read and hear speculation about whether gold is overbought or oversold. Naturally, it leads to the question of whether or not this is a good time to invest in gold.
It's always tricky to figure out the "best" time to buy or sell any item, especially an investment asset. We all would love to buy when a market's at it's lowest and sell when it hits the top. But you probably know that it's almost impossible to do this.
More important, it's not worth the effort. Very few people ever do this - even the great professional traders. Forget shooting for the very bottom or the very top.
In the case of gold, it's an even trickier matter for many people. As opposed to stocks or bonds, for example, most people simply don't understand why they should own gold. And if they do think they should own gold, they don't know how to go about doing it.
So let's start with these basic issues and cover what we can in the short space of a blog post.
As for owning gold, the facts are that gold (and precious metals like silver, platinum, etc.) were once a common asset to include in any investment portfolio. Sometime during the late 1990's/early 2000's it kind of dropped off the radar screen. In my own case, I noticed this as a professional sometime around 2000 and made inquiries of people who were supposedly experts in "asset allocation." In almost every case, these experts had no idea why gold was no longer considered part of a prudent asset allocation. Shockingly many weren't even aware that it had been for many years.
I don't have time now to tell you about all the research I did on my own to get to the bottom of this, but let's just go with this fact for now. Serious investors used to always hold gold in their investment portfolios - and many of them still do. So based on that, we'll just say that yes, you should own some gold.
As for how to invest your money in gold, you've got a lot more choices today than ever before. You can own the metal in the form of coins or bars, own shares in gold mining companies, buy a an electronic or digital security known as an "etf" that represents physical gold, purchase a paper certificate that represents gold held in a vault somewhere...and more.
If you don't own any gold right now, your best first step is to buy gold coins. If you can't bring yourself to buy gold coins right now (for one thing, people don't know how to store gold coins safely) you buy some of the gold etf's through your brokerage account. Two symbols to check out are GLD and GTU. They're different, but essentially both claim to represent gold held somewhere in a vault. You won't directly own any gold yourself. You'll own shares of the etf.
If you can see you're way to buying gold coins, you can do this at a reputable coin dealer, either in person or on the internet. Buying on the internet, if you know you're dealing with a reputable dealer, is a perfectly safe and convenient way to buy gold coins.
I realize this is very basic information, but with gold, so many people simply have no idea where to start. So that's why I thought I'd start with just basics for now. I hope to talk more about this in coming posts.
Oh, and as far as timing goes, if you have no gold at all and you're thinking of buying gold coins, I'd go ahead and do your homework and just buy some. At least get your feet wet.
It's always tricky to figure out the "best" time to buy or sell any item, especially an investment asset. We all would love to buy when a market's at it's lowest and sell when it hits the top. But you probably know that it's almost impossible to do this.
More important, it's not worth the effort. Very few people ever do this - even the great professional traders. Forget shooting for the very bottom or the very top.
In the case of gold, it's an even trickier matter for many people. As opposed to stocks or bonds, for example, most people simply don't understand why they should own gold. And if they do think they should own gold, they don't know how to go about doing it.
So let's start with these basic issues and cover what we can in the short space of a blog post.
As for owning gold, the facts are that gold (and precious metals like silver, platinum, etc.) were once a common asset to include in any investment portfolio. Sometime during the late 1990's/early 2000's it kind of dropped off the radar screen. In my own case, I noticed this as a professional sometime around 2000 and made inquiries of people who were supposedly experts in "asset allocation." In almost every case, these experts had no idea why gold was no longer considered part of a prudent asset allocation. Shockingly many weren't even aware that it had been for many years.
I don't have time now to tell you about all the research I did on my own to get to the bottom of this, but let's just go with this fact for now. Serious investors used to always hold gold in their investment portfolios - and many of them still do. So based on that, we'll just say that yes, you should own some gold.
As for how to invest your money in gold, you've got a lot more choices today than ever before. You can own the metal in the form of coins or bars, own shares in gold mining companies, buy a an electronic or digital security known as an "etf" that represents physical gold, purchase a paper certificate that represents gold held in a vault somewhere...and more.
If you don't own any gold right now, your best first step is to buy gold coins. If you can't bring yourself to buy gold coins right now (for one thing, people don't know how to store gold coins safely) you buy some of the gold etf's through your brokerage account. Two symbols to check out are GLD and GTU. They're different, but essentially both claim to represent gold held somewhere in a vault. You won't directly own any gold yourself. You'll own shares of the etf.
If you can see you're way to buying gold coins, you can do this at a reputable coin dealer, either in person or on the internet. Buying on the internet, if you know you're dealing with a reputable dealer, is a perfectly safe and convenient way to buy gold coins.
I realize this is very basic information, but with gold, so many people simply have no idea where to start. So that's why I thought I'd start with just basics for now. I hope to talk more about this in coming posts.
Oh, and as far as timing goes, if you have no gold at all and you're thinking of buying gold coins, I'd go ahead and do your homework and just buy some. At least get your feet wet.
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