Wealth accumulation & strategic wealth management tips – Since the price of both gold and it’s cousin silver has risen few hundred of percentages since 2001, the investing public has become interested with respect to strategic wealth management. Unlike buying stocks, bonds, or even commodity contracts, buying gold and silver offers more challenges but yet best for wealth accumulation.
What Gold and Silver to Buy?
An investor can place money into precious metals in several forms, in different countries, with varying institutions, and with different tax implications. While this is not a complete list, most of the gold and silver investing vehicles fall into one of 5 categories, according to strategic wealth management tips:
Buying gold and silver coins and storing them.
Buying precious metal Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s)
Buying digital gold from BullionVault, Goldmoney, Pecunix and others.
Buying closed-end gold and silver funds like the Central Fund of Canada (CEF).
Buying gold or silver certificates of ownership such as the Perth Mint program.
Each of these methods has pluses and minuses depending on investing priorities.
1. Buying gold and silver and storing them means buying physical coins from a coin dealer.
If at all possible, buying locally for the first investment is the best method and also a perfect mode of wealth accumulation. Buying coins locally from a dealer establishes a relationship for possibly selling the coins back to the same dealer at a later date. Also, the convenience in knowing an established dealer locally that provides reasonable mark-ups over the spot price of precious metals is valuable.
Buying through the internet can be risky. The dealer will require funds before shipping coins. There have been several cases of dealers holding investors’ funds for months. This process is bad in terms of asset and wealth management.
After the first investment locally, later coins such as kruggerands, gold eagles, etc. can be purchased through the internet. Asset and wealth management experts suggest this process.
2. Precious metals ETF’s bring the purchase of gold and silver to the stock market. Purchased and sold like a stock, ETF’s make it point and click easy to buy and sell. Unfortunately, ETF’s such as GLD for gold and SLV for silver have tax disadvantages that make them expensive to use. Also, ETF’s have expenses so that each year the investor owns less and less precious metal. These investment vehicles are best for precious metal traders that buy and sell gold or silver for a quick profit. Avoid ETFs in the precious metals area.
3. Digital money companies combine the ease of owning a stock with some of the security of owning the physical metal. Goldmoney.com stores metal offshore so governments cannot easily take the gold as happened in the U.S. in 1933. Bullionvault is for trading gold with low mark-ups or trading costs. Pecunix is a smaller company that has been active for several years based in Panama. A small portion of investment funds can be spread into digital money companies, but these are not main investment vehicles due to company risk.
Gold and Silver Portfolio Investment Vehicles
4. Precious metal mutual funds such as CEF are convenient because they operate similar to stocks. Shares buy and sell through brokers with keystrokes. While this is a reasonable solution for investing large sums, one problem is the premium the market places on CEF. At times this premium can be as high as 12% over the value of the metal the fund holds. For this reason, there are better solutions that will be available shortly for investing more than $100k in precious metals.
5. Perth Mint sells gold or silver certificates through brokers world-wide. There has been controversy about whether the Perth Mint has the metal backing the certificates as claimed. Certificates throughout history have been the method for stealing funds from unsuspecting precious metals investors. Morgan-Stanley was sued and lost over falsely claiming to have stored silver for certificates. This is not a recommended method for gold or silver since such investments are primarily for insurance.
Choose the precious metals vehicle wisely and gold will be a bedrock for a retirement portfolio or good wealth accumulation plan.
Copper Silver Gold Investment Prudence and Care
An investment in gold, silver and copper may be worthwhile for a portion of an investor’s portfolio. As the current year wanes and another year approaches, some investors are considering possible adjustments to their portfolios. A major consideration of precious metal investment is inflation. “Inflation” is one of the keywords for the immediate and long-term future in the United States and elsewhere, because many nations are saddled with significant and mounting debt.
Gold Silver and Copper Investment Values and Uses
Gold, silver and copper are a few of several important and critical mineral elements that have great value for all societies. The Etruscans, Egyptians, Syrians, Incas, Minoans, Romans and Greeks are just a few of the many cultures of antiquity that placed great value in these precious metals. Coins, items of worship, ornamentations, jewelry, utensils for common or rare use, often were fashioned from these rarer and precious elements.
The ancient human desires carry forward and into almost every known culture to these times. Many governments and banks hold major reserves of gold and silver, but the uses of all three metals have expanded into the modern worlds of electronics and space — far beyond anyone’s earlier imaginations.
Gold Silver and Copper Investment Important Questions to Ask
Important basic ideas and questions for any investor include:
What metals are the best for investment?
What variations of metal investment should be considered? Precious metal and mineral stocks only, coins, antique items, utensils, and jewelry, are some of the important possibilities and variations of the gold, silver and copper investment theme.
How much of an investment should be made, and what proportion of any portfolio, large or small, should be considered?
What kind of liquidity will be available for metal investments, in whatever form, and can divestments or sales of metallic assets be quickly and effectively accomplished?
Gold Silver and Copper Investment Decision-Making and Strategies
Final investment choices, whether copper, silver or gold, are influenced by at least six main questions that need to be investigated and decided:
What is the current condition of the world market with regard to demand to gold?
What are the current prices of some of these personally-preferred investment metals?
Based on the available funds for the purchase, and personal preferences for types of metal, what purchases are the best to be made or considered?
Should a single metal be considered, or would a mix of metal types be best?
Have the pros and cons of this been written down, discussed and evaluated, and has the best advice been sought?
Are precious metal mutual funds one of the safest and best of all alternatives?
Precious Metals, Places to Invest and How to Invest
Precious metals such as gold, silver and copper, tend to increase in value with time. Metals are not getting rich quick schemes, but they can and should be, true investments i.e., longer-term investments, rather than short term investments. In times of actual, or projected, inflation precious metals can be a strong protective hedge. Wars and conflicts, oil crises, and other world events frequently shake markets and affect the dollar, pound, yen, Euro, and other currency values.
Precious metals are one of several strategies to consider, investigate and explore fully. The protection and growth of wealth assets, regardless of the size, requires solid, broad and valid information, and eventual implementation of the highest and best strategies for achieving financial success. This is a daunting task, but solid, good investment choices always are important, regardless of the size of one’s portfolio.
