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Is it worth investing in gold?
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well you wont 'gain interest' with gold.
I you have cash sufficient to tide you over for 6-12 months, look to a S&S isa using a lifestyle fund like the vanguard series.
Or stay in cash (and suffer shortfall and inflation risk) and put it in a current acct paying 3-5%
Could you tell me a little more about the S&S ISA? What's a "lifestyle fund"? Who are "Vanguard Series"? What sort of risk are involved? Cheers
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The Vanguard funds to which atush is referring are described quite nicely over at Monevator. You'll also find plenty of information about S&S ISAs in other articles on that site.ValiantSaint wrote: »Could you tell me a little more about the S&S ISA? What's a "lifestyle fund"? Who are "Vanguard Series"? What sort of risk are involved? Cheers0 -
Catie_the_Investor wrote: »Is it worth investing in gold?
Yes, if the price is right and the investment forms ''part'' of your portfolio''.
I'm not sure why some would feel that stocks and shares are ''an investment'', whilst gold is not. If you buy either at the right price and sell at the right price, the result is the same.... profit. Buy and sell either at the wrong time ... loss
I wonder if anyone was as crazy as my husband and ''invested'' in Northern Rock:). Never had the same problem with gold.
Obviously, I'm not a financial adviser and no doubt someone will come along with all the facts and figures with respect to how well the stock market has performed etc.
Is it worth posting in bold just to make your argument true? No.
If you consider profit on your buy price as an investment, then yes you could consider gold one. But as it pays no interest/dividends I consider it a commodity investment and therefore a pure speculation and play against inflation.
Not an investment that pays an income such as equities, bonds, gilts, cash and property.
In any case it isnt suitable for the OP
AS for Vanguard, there are a few large threads here on the subject as well. just search on it?
they are large funds invested in equities and bonds/gilts in different %ages from 100% equities to 20% depending on your attitude to risk. And are global in nature for the large part.
If you want to make sure your investments carry a smaller risk, the best thing to do is diversify. Which means not investing all your money in any one thing.
Gold is one thing, one commodity among others like oil, gems, etc. There is also property, cash, bonds gilts, and equities. In equities you have single shares and then more diverse funds and investment trusts.0 -
Catie_the_Investor wrote: »I wonder if anyone was as crazy as my husband and ''invested'' in Northern Rock:).
i had some northern rock shares (and i'm not catie's husband) ... however, it was 1 small part of a larger portfolio of shares, so it wasn't a complete disaster when they became worthless ... did make me feel stupid, though ... come to think of it, i still have the share certificate - i could get it framed and hang it on the wall as a reminder.
if you're interested in finding out about investing with a bit less drama, then masonic's link to monevator might be a good place to start.0 -
grey_gym_sock wrote: »it wasn't a complete disaster when they became worthless ... did make me feel stupid, though
We're wired for losses to hurt more than gains reward. Complete losses hurt even more because they are usually preceded by senior management (aided and abetted by auditors) telling everyone who'll listen that everything is just rosy.
Being lied to and conned by a load of useless lying bankers and auditors hurts more than the financial loss.I am not a financial adviser and neither do I play one on television. I might occasionally give bad advice but at least it's free.
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.0 -
Where can you get figures for cash returns from actively managing high interest building society deposit accounts?Malthusian wrote: »compare ..... with cash returns
(All the ones I have seen are based on leaving it in the same low paying bank account)“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair0 -
There is a useful dataset showing typical savings accounts interest rates since 1960 at http://www.swanlowpark.co.uk/savingsinterestannual.jsp. It is flawed as the source data is inconsistent (see the bottom) but it is still a useful comparator.Glen_Clark wrote:Where can you get figures for cash returns from actively managing high interest building society deposit accounts?
(All the ones I have seen are based on leaving it in the same low paying bank account)
If by "high interest deposit accounts" you mean maximising Santander's 3-2-1 account and the like, it would be near-impossible to obtain a meaningful and consistent figure for those returns over time, because a) of the restrictions on how much you can put in those accounts b) because chasing high-interest deals is a hobbyist activity, and the interest rate fails to take into account the time cost of researching accounts, filling in forms and chasing up transfers.gadgetmind wrote:Introducing an uncorrelated asset such as gold or bonds, to an equity portolfio, can both reduce volatility *and* increase returns.
Similarly, introducing a small holding of equities to a bond portfolio, can both increase returns (perhaps obvious) but also reduce volatility (less obvious).
Even in the theoretical world of modern portfolio theory, it is accepted that there is a point at which you become sufficiently diversified that adding more investments to the portfolio no longer has any benefit in terms of adding reward without adding risk.
Someone with a diversified portfolio of stockmarket tracker funds will almost certainly be at this point. Reducing exposure to things that go up in the long term and adding exposure to things that just sit there in the long term cannot therefore not have any beneficial effect on returns.0 -
Malthusian wrote: »Someone with a diversified portfolio of stockmarket tracker funds will almost certainly be at this point. Reducing exposure to things that go up in the long term and adding exposure to things that just sit there in the long term cannot therefore not have any beneficial effect on returns.
Someone with a very long timeframe, and a very strong stomach, could consider a 100% equities portfolio. However, they would lose both the volatility dampening effect of safer assets and the opportunity to "sell high and buy low" that rebalancing of uncorrelated assets brings to the table.
For instance, I just top sliced some REITs and infrastructure (values of both have soared as people seek safe havens that generate income) and used the bulk of the cash to buy more EM shares and miners. I didn't have to make any complex value judgements here, I just hit the download button on the BestInvest web site, copied the data into my own spreadsheet, and it flagged which holdings were far enough to my target allocation to be considered for a tweak.
You can just rebalance with new cash in many cases, but holding assets that tend to perform well when equities don't gives you more opportunities.I am not a financial adviser and neither do I play one on television. I might occasionally give bad advice but at least it's free.
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.0 -
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How do you know that the OP posted in bold to make her ''argument true''? Maybe she has a visual problem like some of the other contributors who use these boards, and who also use bold print.
OP means original poster. This person is different to the poster of the bold message.
When composing a message in bold, it doesn't appear in bold, it appears in normal text with bold markup tags so I don't see how that would help a visually impaired person.
Existing messages wouldn't be in bold, so this visually impaired person would presumably have a problem with those and pretty much every message on MSE.
People with visual impairments can change settings in their browser/operating system to make all text larger/bolder, so they wouldn't have needed to bold an individual message.
Subsequent messages by the bold poster aren't in bold, so even if you're right and they did have a visual impairment, it's been fixed now 0
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