Precious metals - gold, silver, platinum, and more

[Modee]

Over time, these can be a good investment, but be mindful of transactional costs.

When you buy actual metals (gold, silver, platinum), most brokers will make you pay at least 10% over the actual metal price, and then when you sell, most will charge another 10%. So, that means your metal coins, ingots, etc. will need to go up at least 20% just to break even.

One way to avoid this is to purchase CONTRACTS on the metals - betting that the prices will go up, or down. But this is some of the riskiest investing available, although the potential upside is HUGE.

[emanon]

Another option is ETF's

[Modee]

EFT Gold has come a long way, true. But it costs money to maintain in a way like paying "margin interest" on stocks. And there are "surplus" costs when you buy and sell. So, in a way, it comes back to same sort of transactional costs, maybe even worse, than just buying bullion.

Except of course there is no way around these maintenance fees on EFT Gold. You can't just "pay it off" and be "no margin."

[Modee]

What's amazing is that gold is currently more valuable than platinum, even though platinum is a more rare substance. This has to do with supply and demand - similar to the way that diamonds, a relatively common and at best semi-precious stone, are made valuable by the withholding of supply.