Gold — How to Buy It?

I heard you discussing negative interest rates and saving in a down economy and how gold can be a safe place, or at least should be a part of a well diversified portfolio. What is the best way to go about buying gold? Where should one go to buy gold? There’s a lot of commercials and websites, I don’t know who can and can’t be trusted.

Thank you!

Terry Says:  Probably its time to write another column about gold. But here is a mini answer:

1)  You can buy gold bullion coins (no collector’s value, just the value of the gold) at major coin dealers for a premium of about 5% over the daily price of gold.  Put them in a safe deposit box.  They don’t earn interest or pay dividends — but then what does, these days?

2)Or you can buy shares of gold mining companies.  Instead of choosing which company, there are plenty of mutual funds that buy gold shares. My long time favorite is the U.S. Global Investors Gold and Precious Metals fund.  Click the highlighted text for a link.  Full disclosure:  I have owned this fund forever!

3) Or you can buy an Exchange Traded Fund that buys gold bullion. The largest of these is the SPDR Gold Trust, symbol GLD.   The price of the ETF goes up and down, based directly on the price of gold set in London and in the futures markets.