Gold,silver

Sir_Humphrey

Generali wrote: »

HTH. Next time I won't bother.

There's no helping Gold bugs.

Generali

Sir_Humphrey wrote: »

There's no helping Gold bugs.

I should have brought the Gold Bug spray.

Mr_angry_5

"You can also buy gold over the counter at most of the larger banks in Switzerland. You can bring it into the UK without paying duty but you must declare it to Customs."
why doesn't everyone buy it from Switzerland then ? seems you get it cheaper there. and what do you do about selling it after owning it for a while ?

as you might have guessed i have never done this before, and current bank interest rates have made me think about doing something with the money i have in the bank.
no-one has remarked on silver yet! is it not as good to but silver?

sorry Generali, hope your not offended. posting on here and getting a reply about hedges was a little unexpected for me.
thanks for the replies all.
Mr a.

Generali

Mr_angry wrote: »

sorry Generali, hope your not offended. posting on here and getting a reply about hedges was a little unexpected for me.
thanks for the replies all.
Mr a.

I was but if it's a misunderstanding then no problem.

A hedge is a way of protecting yourself from a negative outcome. An example could be having a big bet on the outsider in a horse race that you think has a really good chance of winning and then having a small bet on the favourite just in case.

By buying gold, you're hedging against the pound falling.

The downsides are you won't get an income as you would if you bought most sorts of assets and clearly there's a security problem if you store the stuff at home. If you get someone else to store it you have other problems like how do you know they've actually bought the gold for you and what happens if they go bust?

If you want to buy a hedge against future bad times then, as I say, farmland is a good one I think. It's relatively cheap, produces a commodity we all need and can be let for a rate of return. If you prefer gold then good luck to you.

Dithering_Dad

Investing the greater part of your wealth in commodities that you don't understand is probably the best way to impoverish yourself that exists, well apart from investing with Madoff.

There is no guarantee that Gold will be above the current price in 5 years time, indeed it may be a lot lower than it is now. You could easily invest your £20k and be left with £10k.

Better to keep your money in the bank and while you might not be getting a great return on it, at least the capital is safe.

If you're totally committed to buying Gold, then I'd recommend you bought Gold Sovereigns. They are a currency and so there will be no Capital Gains tax and no VAT to pay. They are relatively portable and much easier to dispose of. You can also split them up and hide them in various locations in your house, though I'd suggest you invested in a hidden floor safe or perhaps even a safety deposit box at the bank.

You should keep a blog on here about how you're doing. It'd make interesting reading to watch how speculating in a commodity that is pretty much at an all-time high price, that is priced in dollars when Sterling is pretty much at an all-time low, can wipe out savings in as many weeks as it took in years to build up.

TDS_2

I've been selling gold this year (still keeping some though), though I'm no prophet, and don't claim to know where the price is going(!)

As one other poster mentioned - gold is very high in sterling terms. Will it continue to rise?

Media interest usually spells bad news, but who knows?

It is very volatile (silver even more so) and could easily lose/gain 50% over the next year. Are you prepared for that risk?

Gen - Is there an easy way that one would one buy farmland?

Generali

TDS wrote: »

I've been selling gold this year (still keeping some though), though I'm no prophet, and don't claim to know where the price is going(!)

As one other poster mentioned - gold is very high in sterling terms. Will it continue to rise?

Media interest usually spells bad news, but who knows?

It is very volatile (silver even more so) and could easily lose/gain 50% over the next year. Are you prepared for that risk?

Gen - Is there an easy way that one would one buy farmland?

Rural estate agents (seriously). I used to see farmland up for sale in EA windows now and again when I was out and about.

I guess you could take out an ad in a rural-based magazine offering to buy farmland on a sale-and-leaseback basis (that is you buy the land and rent it back to the original owner). There must be a lot of farmers hurting right now as credit terms are tightened that would love the chance to get some capital in whilst not reducing the size of their business.

van_persie

If you fancy a punt on silver or gold:

http://www.etfsecurities.com/en/welcome.asp

You can put these funds into your ISA 'wrapper', too...

bubblesmoney

i am NOT recommending to buy gold or shares. do your own research and live to enjoy or regret your decision at your leisure.

it pays to be vigilant in turbulent times. in turbulent times gold has ALWAYS outperformed stocks. in 5 out of 6 previous usa downturns gold has always outperformed shares.

in the long run over 200 years shares have outperformed gold. but you and i dont live 200 years, so the cyclical changes are what matter to us as the cycles can last 10y or more and wrong investment decisions can literally screw your finances for a life time.

if you see recent cyclical changes and see the DJIA to gold price ratio, it has previously gone down to a ratio of 1 as recently as 1980 !!!!!! and as of today we are at an ratio of just below 10 i think!!!! so there is still a big down side to the stock market (going only by this one ratio) especially factoring in the further mortgage defaults that will probably happen till 2014 with Alt-A mortgages (early 2014 is the last date for renewals of Alt-A lie to buy loans which amounted to 1 trillion). this excludes the 600trillion plus derivatives market bubble that might (i feel will) explode sooner rather than later.

a few years ago around 2005 motleyfool had an article about whether gold or google would be better to buy !!! see todays gold price and see todays google price. but profit all depends on what price you bought it (gold or share or house or any damn thing).

as with any investment you can lose a lot of money in either shares or gold. with gold you dont get a dividend its just capital appreciation or depriciation. with shares you may get dividend +/- capital gain or loss. with physical gold atleast you dont get conned by creative accounting skills of company accountants.

market sentiment plays a big role in price fluctuations and now market sentiment is bad. when market sentiment is bad them gold prices go higher, when market sentiment is good shares do better.

as to what will happen in the future i dont know, but have managed to bumble along and made decent investment gains purely out of luck (with pure coincidence of fundamentals being in my favour).

you can still make money even if the fundamentals are totally wrong, just by being lucky or bold enough to buy on the upgoing trend and sell before the inevitable crash when not backed by fundamentals.

sometimes trying to preserve what you have got might be better than trying to make profits.

EDIT:

its not that easy to buy or SELL gold in the uk. but it is easy to buy or sell gold in india, hence my views. you just have to see the gold shopping malls there in many cities. for eg. see zaveri bazaar in bombay/mumbai (literal translation means - jewellers market) there you have hundreds of smaller jewellers and many bigger than tesco-extras some huge buildings selling gold and jewellery and you have to see the crowds there. but gold buying in india continues even when the trends go negative and not of the speculative kind in most other places. i am not sure how easy it is to sell gold in the uk. selling gold in india is just as easy as selling second hand books, you can do it at most jewellers in any nook and cranny of the country

bubblesmoney

i wouldnt touch silver with a barge pole. but silver art work and serving utensils do look good.

regarding ETFs they might be good just for speculation for the short term but not good if holding for the long term. have a look at how many went bust on the links on this link

am looking into this option myself but dont know much about it. would be grateful if others who know more about this can enlighten me. see digital gold currency