A lot of Americans are feeling a bit uncertain about the future of the dollar and of the global markets in general. When confidence in stocks and paper currencies falls, people tend to turn towards physical assets, especially precious metals, with gold being the perennial favorite. There are lots of ways to invest in gold, but in uncertain times, direct ownership of this asset is best, so pay a visit to Golden Eagle Coins to start off your stockpile.
Why direct ownership is best
Direct ownership means that you’ve bought physical gold – whether it’s jewelry, bars or coins. Of course, there’s ETFs and shares in mining companies, but when the economic climate is looking gloomy, people feel safer holding their own assets than trusting a company that could fold at any minute.
The love of gold never dies
Gold has been our most prized, desired and treasured precious metal. As soon as humans worked out how to extract it from its ore or from its seams, it’s driven our appetites and we haven’t lost our enthusiasm for this metal millennia later. In fact, our love of gold has grown, especially now we know how to use it in science, medicine and industry.
It’s inflation-proof
Whatever you pay for your gold at any one time, you can sell it for its future price when the time comes. Gold doesn’t ever devalue; of course, its market value will take a dip every so often, but it always rises over time because supply never quite reaches demand. If you bought a car for $10,000 in 2012, there’s no way you’d get $10,000 for it now, even though all the new cars cost more due to inflation. With gold, you never have to worry about this sort of devaluation and depreciation.
It never loses its intrinsic value
As an element, gold will always have a high value to humanity because of its appearance, its rarity and its many other applications. It’ll always be in high demand and if there’s ever a financial or other sort of crisis, you can sell it or use it as currency no matter where you are in the world.
The biggest benefit of gold is that you can take physical possession of it – the old adage “If you can’t hold it, you don’t own it,” is very true. If you think about mutual funds, shares, ETFs and so on, all it takes is a big enough hack or a worldwide financial crash and your investments are all gone as they’re just theoretical digits in a program. Gold, on the other hand is portable and tangible. No-one can wipe it clean from a balance sheet as long as you can protect it.
Not many other assets and investments – physical or not – have these advantages; physical gold gives you a solid insurance policy against financial meltdown. Even better, it will carry on performing nicely for you when the going’s good as it only ever increases in value. What’s not to love?
