gold investment

Terry Says

Gold is an “asset class” — just like stocks, bonds, commodities.  It’s sort of “special” in that gold has had a long history of being a refuge when “paper” currencies were called into question for political reasons or because “too many” pieces of paper currency were printed by a government (inflation).

In recent years the U.S. dollar has been the strong reserve currency for the world.  For example, oil is always priced in dollars — because the world trusts our central bank (The Fed) to keep control of the value of the currency.   So gold prices stayed fairly stable.  You may have noticed, though, that as the President challenged the Fed — and as our global political stance has been questioned because of recent Presidential action — the price of gold has moved higher.  That is a direct result of the world’s investors starting to question the stability of our government and our currency.

We never want to see gold prices soar!  It would mean that bad things are happening in the US!  BUT, gold can be a “hedge” against temporary fears about the U.S. Dollar.  I would suggest buying gold mutual funds — shares of gold mining companies. Every major mutual fund company offers them.  But this would be only a small part of your overall portfolio.