Should You Buy Gold and Store it in Your Fallout Shelter?
Look, Shiny Gold Stuff.
Humans have always had a fascination with gold, whether it is ancient civilizations creating ornate, yet undervalued by the culture, jewelry, or separate cultures coveting that self same commodity. Of course nowadays, people see gold as a universally dependable insurance policy against inflation or political chaos, which is of course comical really, as if things go full and truly south, gold is about as edible or useful as paper currency, but I digress. If you are reading this article it means you want to know how to invest in gold, or at least, the ways other people are investing in it.
Giant, Obnoxious Chunks of Gold.
Ok, so gold bullion is not actually giant, James Bond style bricks of gold, despite the amusing imagery. Bullion of course refers to any substance in a pure, concentrated form. Most of the gold bullion that private investors find themselves in possession of involves various types of gold coins. Gold coins are small, available in a consistent weight increment, and, in most cases, bought in small enough increments that most investment houses aren’t interested in scamming customers in order to gain a small profit margin.
However, at the end of the day, gold bullion is just a chunk of semi-rare metal, worth an amount directionally proportionate to the value of currency. The gold is not “doing anything” in a financial sense, it’s just sitting there being valuable, but not actually gaining any value.
Part of a Mutual Fund
Another way of investing in gold is to partake of ownership as part of a larger vehicle, like in the case of a mutual fund. This allows investors to purchase a smaller amount of gold in order to further diversify an already diverse option. I don’t want this to turn into a discussion about the relative effectiveness of mutual fund, but this method of gold ownership is designed more for long term consistency than short-term paranoia motivated insurance.
He’s a Miner, 49’er, of Gold That Is.
Some investors prefer to cut out the middleman so to speak, and invest their money directly into a mining operation that focuses on the discovery and harvesting of gold. This is a…..weird option, because it involves researching a particular company and investing not necessarily in the merits of the organization, but in the potential growth of the market in which the company specializes.
Again, this particular method is not exactly going to make anyone’s portfolio explode, as gold mining technology, and the existence of most of the gold mines in the world is pretty clearly documented and fully explored. If buying bullion is the first step to living in a bunker under your house when the economy collapses, then buying stock in a mining corporation is storing a couple of cases of water in your garage.
