Investing in gold or silver ?

If you can't touch it, you don't own it.

Get physical if you're planning to hold for a decent amount of time. Avoid ETFs.

http://funds.ft.com/UnlistedFundFactsheet.aspx?mid=CPGGA

Exactly why do you have to hold physical gold inorder to ride irs price curve ?

FAFH, you need to be clear in your own mind as to what your primary motivation is in investing in gold in the first place. Then the answers you are seeking become all too obvious.

Lost me M, I'm afraid.
Just remember, most of us on here are just mere mortals struggling to make a crust from the scraps thrown to us from the privileged elite.

Buy why necessarily hold physical gold as opposed to ETFs ?
The emphasis is on " hold". Does it matter how you hold it ?

fafh, what here some guys are implying is that the only reason to hold gold is to have an asset to protect you when all goes pear shaped. if you held gold in paper form, it s not obvious you wd get the delivery of your asset...
anyway, gold in physical form has its own disadvantages too.
first, it costs more.
second, it could be fake and you need an audit when you buy it these days ( likewise you wd be required to provide one when you sell in case of the collapse of the system ).
third, although a safer option in terms of investment, it doesnt strike me as the safest option in terms of personal safety. you all guys plan to have a safe, few bars of gold in it, and then sleep happy? if the system fell apart, would you risk to have something so valuable at home? locked?
fourth, although of course gold would keep a purchasing power, it would suffer a loss of value too, as it would lack the flexibility of use that paper money gives ( imagine a world with only 1000 dollar notes, next thing you know shopping at tesco would cost 1000 dollars ).

the only things to preserve your purchasing power in case of a collapse are your skills, your work ethics, your adaptability ( basically making sure the society needs you ). thats the only wealth you need to protect ( and increase ).

@ JW

b0ll0cks

@ FAFH

simple, if you are speculating buy paper gold, if you are hedging against a financial system collapse, buy physical.

Don't be too hasty. If your "skill" is the world's oldest profession, then JW may be right, you don't need gold, just your skills if everything goes pear shaped.

is it too much to ask which part you thought it was bllks and you didnt agree with>

is physical gold more expensive or not? ( clue: probably you can check even on the meerket website )
would you buy it if it wasnt certified? ( clue: check how much fake gold is around these days )
is it safe to keep it at home, especially as someone predicts at same time fights in the streets ( clue: ask the met police )
is it true that having all the 'money' expressed in very expensive cuts, would reduce the purchasing power of it? ( clue: check how much tesco pays for gold these days, and we re in normal times )
is it true that during hyperinflationary periods we have massive redistribution of wealth ( sometimes with violent modes too, clue: ask the zimbabwean landowners )? ask yourself who is sure to eat, a doctor or an insurance broker, a farmer or an m&a director? so is it so wrong to assume that making sure society needs you is your only sure way to mantain your purchasing power?

happy to have your comments, if they go beyond the single word. else, please avoid polluting the forum.

Thanks for the advice. Some of them books I already got them.
You didn't anyway succeed to explain anything, you re so obsessed by the idea of having to win an argument that you don't even care to understand other peoples positions.
I never mentioned gold is not a way to keep your purchasing power. As a matter of fact I was the only one giving fafh a reply to his question. I added a couple of comments which wanted to highlight what's the cost of buyin that extra insurance in case of a collapse. As things don't come for free and arbitrages dont exist but for very short time  You (used as generic term) make your own calculations: is it a 10pct premium (and I'm sorry to insist: a security headache; you would be a criminal if you neglected these things having a family) worthwhile ? You decide: if hyperinflation is a likely scenario (more than 10pct) you take delivery. But if you think theres only a remote possibility of that happening but you still want to protect yourself angst inflation and rounds of Qe then paper gold is enough.
Some people here think that the next wave of the crises will bring riots and violence on the streets. Read above and all the other gold threads. if that's the case (not my view, I don't believe in hyperinflation to start with) I guarantee you you can survive with your stored wealth only for a limited period. I dont want to sound uber socialist, but it s always the chimera of the wealthy classes to believe they can weather any revolution. If the system collapses, it collapses in all of it's forms. Hence my comment about having to keep yourself adaptable and useful to society. If you want to know, the coS

Cell 1	Cell 2
Cell 3	Cell 4

mment was more directed to the guys here who are still at college, think the system is rotten to the core and forecast its collapse,but protect their future by buying gold In

What's the thoughts on having physical gold but stored in a bank vault? Is this safe? Or is physical in your own home the only way to go?

JW, your are incorrigible. It seems that you are incapable of muttering "oh, I get it now" under your breath  and just walk away. Which inevitably means a lot of unnecessary work for me to keep explaining. Also you have a real talent for "evolving" the debate to only the points are too obvious to even dispute as a way out.

If you are buying from a credible dealer, there's ZERO chance, I repeat, ZERO chance of buying fake gold. The tungsten story was overblown and restricted only to bullion for obvious technical and economic reasons (the smallest counterfeit piece found was 16 troy ounces). One ounce coins would be very difficult to produce with tungsten cores and very easy to detect because of the "dull" sound produced when struck as compared to a high "ting" note on hard dense metals like tungsten. Plus economically it makes sense to "counterfeit" the larger bullion sizes if that were the case. There was considerable speculation that the tungsten core gold bars were planted to be "discovered" to suppress demand at the time (kill trust - evidently it worked in your case). Whatever affect it had on the gold market, it was very short lived. Any credible dealer will provide you with the assay results of your purchased bullion which include ultrasonic and accelerometer "hammer" (resonant frequency) measurements specifically used for tungsten detection (the speed of sound in tungsten is twice that of gold). The gold market, if the trend in the price of gold is any indication, seems to have shrugged off any concerns about fake gold. I would advise you to do the same.

Zimbabwe has had systemic violence for a long time now, even before their currency collapse, which continues right up to today. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO with their experience with hyperinflation and currency collapse. Surprisingly enough, the "violence" that has been for example historically recorded in places where the currency collapsed through excessive fiat money printing like Germany (1923), Chile (1973), Argentina (1980), Yugoslavia (1989), Russia (1998) has been mostly aimed at achieving political change. Hyperinflation was inevitably  followed by government collapse and regime change, it was NOT violence or crime directed at robbing fellow citizens of their stash of gold (those who had any). Yes, you're quite correct, I said they'll be fights in the streets (people have a tendency to get upset at their government when they wake up one morning and discover that those savings they thought they had in the bank are no longer there and those pensions they thought they had coming are being paid to them with coloured toilet paper), not in your living room stealing your family silverware. Read some of the books I suggested.

It seems to me like your "everything goes pear shaped" collapse scenario is an apocalyptic, thermonuclear war heads raining on out heads, an irradiated environment without food sources and people resorting to cannibalism to survive scenario ("The Road"). I don't know why anyone would want to even survive such a scenario, but yes, in this case, "skills" may be more valuable. Being a hand weapons expert and owing some would be far better than owning gold in those circumstances. That's not my view of the world. Life will go on, it always does, it's just that the next medium of exchange when we rebuild, following a period of mostly trading by barter, won't be fiat money based on "faith and credit" . And in this scenario, gold will perform it's function as it has for 6,000 years now in our history. Preserve wealth.

I think I'm just going to stick to just saying "b0ll0cks" from now on, a lot less work.

I'm seriously now investigating the feasibility of replacing the structural joists in my main house with gold ones. I'm assuimg of course that the current ones aren't gold ( the previous owner was rather richer than me), but I haven't actually had them assayed yet.

I can't imagine that M is the most popular man in the office, given his dogmatic views on not only the inevitable but also the imminent cllapse of the world's financial system.
I can picture people rushing into their offices and closing their doors, as they see him coming down the corridor eyes glazed, steam coming out of his ears, arms waving in all directions, saying the end is nigh.

Mene, what are your views on the silver market? Obviously not the direction it is going, but whether it is manipulated, or whether the rumours that the comex don't have enough stock to meet delivery is actually true?

Is a scenario where the paper market crashes but the physical market is still high (because of lack of supply) actually possible? I guess it could be physical silver all the way if you believe any of the conspiracy stories out there.

Btw M I really do appreciate your declared intent to keep your posts shorter and language easier in the future.
I'm gonna hold you to that one.

Any chance I can eat humble pie then M ?

Been away for a while and im not here to argue but still the forum is against mel, a few of you here talk sense from different views.

dont understand how mel is so wrong in your views.

one mans meat is another mans poison.

in short dont waste energy arguing if mel is so wrong oppose his views and profit / lose from it.

And all the bullion I have ever bought has been held in my hands.

thats the way i will do it, and made a good few quid from it.