Gold (for diversification and balance)

aekostas

EdGasketTheSecond said:

If you are in a UK SIPP then I think you are looking at ETFs only for gold.

I am in the UK and one can have physical gold (no other physical metal) in a SIPP. It's just that those SIPPs I found charge too much for small investors like me.

Another_Saver said:

The value will crash to negligible when Elon starts mining it from space.

I am not sure I need to worry in that case (others might) as I expect my workplace pension, my other SIPP, pretty much everyone and their dog will have shares in Elon. When he gets there and starts mining it and does so economically.

DiddyDavies

Another_Saver said:

The value will crash to negligible when Elon starts mining it from space.

You've not really thought that through have you?
Do you honestly think any individual, company or country is going to spend millions (probably billions) of $, £ or € to study, plan and execute space mining missions knowing that the product they mine is going to be next to worthless if they succeed in their endeavors and get it back to earth?
Anyway, If/when it does finally happen, I doubt if anyone currently posting on here will still be alive to worry about it.

Another_Saver

DiddyDavies said:

Another_Saver said:

The value will crash to negligible when Elon starts mining it from space.

You've not really thought that through have you?
Do you honestly think any individual, company or country is going to spend millions (probably billions) of $, £ or € to study, plan and execute space mining missions knowing that the product they mine is going to be next to worthless if they succeed in their endeavors and get it back to earth?
Anyway, If/when it does finally happen, I doubt if anyone currently posting on here will still be alive to worry about it.

Yes I have.

Please don't patronise me or straw man my points.
People are already trying to do this.

DiddyDavies

Another_Saver said:

DiddyDavies said:

Another_Saver said:

The value will crash to negligible when Elon starts mining it from space.

You've not really thought that through have you?
Do you honestly think any individual, company or country is going to spend millions (probably billions) of $, £ or € to study, plan and execute space mining missions knowing that the product they mine is going to be next to worthless if they succeed in their endeavors and get it back to earth?
Anyway, If/when it does finally happen, I doubt if anyone currently posting on here will still be alive to worry about it.

Yes I have.

Please don't patronise me or straw man my points.
People are already trying to do this.

I think you need to look up the definition of a straw man argument.
I was responding directly to a point that you raised which was about the price of gold crashing if/when space mining takes off and stating why I didn't think it would happen.
Are you honestly saying that you think anyone would be willing to spend a fortune mining in space to bring back a product that would be of negligible value?

Malthusian

DiddyDavies said:

You've not really thought that through have you?
Do you honestly think any individual, company or country is going to spend millions (probably billions) of $, £ or € to study, plan and execute space mining missions knowing that the product they mine is going to be next to worthless if they succeed in their endeavors and get it back to earth?

Elon Musk will, because he's a nutter. QED.

Maybe you should spend more time thinking things through and less throwing shade.

Slightly less facetiously, your argument that nobody will go to space to mine gold because doing so will lower the price is no different from saying that nobody will go to California to mine it. In the hypothetical future where we can economically mine gold from space, there will be plenty of other minerals and metals we can mine there as well, so it won't cost billions to bring back gold with all the other stuff, it will just cost a bit of extra fuel and storage space.

itwasntme001

There is some historical evidence to suggest that gold is actually a good diversifier.  I can't remember for how long a period but I think it was something like over the last 30 or 40 years a stock-gold portfolio would have produced a similar return to a 100% stock portfolio but with significantly reduced drawdowns.  An example of diversification being a great tool for free.

That is not to say it will continue to work like this going forward (no one can know 100%), but with real interest rates looking to be low/negative for a long time (due to the massive amount of global debt), I think some gold does make sense and probably will continue to act as a good diversifier.

I do know for sure that being 100% equities even at a young age is not optimal at all.  I have around 50% of my net worth (7-figure) in equities and I think even that is a bit too much.

Another_Saver

People are already developing space mining technologies, the economies of scale are like the transition from paper to the internet. On earth mined commodities need to be moved by truck, rail or ship, and need warehouses, storage, security, insurance etc.
In space all you need to do is nudge a rock on a trajectory to a harvesting facility and then nudge it on a trajectory to a fall on a wide open plain for collection.
Relatively speaking, this will effectively end commodities scarcity. There are millions of times more materials in the solar system that in known Earth minable reserves.

In 20 years Musk has created reusable rockets and built a company from scratch to being in the top 10 publicly traded in the world.

Your point is invalid as it relies on the argument that current commodity prices will not incentivise initial attempts. Prices will not crash all at once, but inevitably the value of commodities will fall to negligible fractions of current prices as they transition from scarce to as common as air and seawater. That is why commodities do not make sense as an investment. Meanwhile economies and stock markets will continue to grow.

DiddyDavies

Malthusian said:

Elon Musk will, because he's a nutter. QED.

Maybe you should spend more time thinking things through and less throwing shade.

Slightly less facetiously, your argument that nobody will go to space to mine gold because doing so will lower the price is no different from saying that nobody will go to California to mine it. In the hypothetical future where we can economically mine gold from space, there will be plenty of other minerals and metals we can mine there as well, so it won't cost billions to bring back gold with all the other stuff, it will just cost a bit of extra fuel and storage space.

What I stated was that I didn't think that anyone would go to space and mine for gold knowing that by doing so the price would plummet to such a degree as to make it next to worthless. After all, such an endeavor would probably cost billions, billions that would need to be obtained from investors and surely those investors would want a reasonable return on their money, something they wouldn't get from mining and bringing back a product of low value.
 
I'm sure that if/when it does finally happen, "space gold" may well be sold at a vast premium compared to gold mined here in much the same way as Welsh gold is sold at many times the price of gold mined elsewhere and as such it probably won't cause the price of gold to crash to a negligible figure as claimed. 

[Deleted User]

Bitcoin is much better choice than gold when it comes to assets inversely correlated to equities or just alternative assets.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKKBN27Z2IG

I wouldn't worry about gold too much, just put 5% of your assets to Bitcoin and leave it there, with luck that 5% will beat remaining 95%.

aekostas

DiddyDavies said:

I'm sure that if/when it does finally happen, "space gold" may well be sold at a vast premium compared to gold mined here

Moon-gold: for those with a dark side (Pink Floyd do the soundtrack).

Mars-gold for men (D. Bowie for the ads); Venus-gold for women (Bananarama in the background).

Can I register these, do you think?