As Clayton said I use SLV and GLD etf’s. The bulk of my gains have been in silver however, not gold. This has been the most convenient method.
Okay, cool. Interesting. How does silver go up quicker than gold when the USD inflates? I thought they were both worth a fixed amount of wealth, and then moved up in comparison to how many USDs were printed and all.
And, by the way, can either of you recommend any investors who run finance podcasts, blogs, or anything? I really want to learn more about this kind of stuff. I don’t plan on going into finance when I’m older, but I’d like to know what to do with my extra money.
Silver lagged gold. Look at a chart comparing silver to gold for the last few years. Silver lagged gold quite a bit. It was ~$20 give or take while gold went from $600 to $1400
Regarding podcasts… not really.
I have been wrestling with the idea of doing it myself. I have done really well but am not sure I want the burden of revealing everything I do and having others replicate it. Sometimes I lose money and don’t want others to suffer even though overall I have far beaten the market.
I would suggest you read “The Bible of Options Strategies” by Guy Cohen, after you understand stocks in general.
Clayton Slade:
The fed would have to buy corporate bonds, credit card securities, etc…
They don’t control everything.
They do and they don’t…
Every commercial bank has an account at the central bank and at the end of each day that account is either in plus or minus. If there is money on the account they get to deposit it with the central bank at the central banks rate or just below. If there is a deficit they will first try to loan from another bank.
If there is a deficit in the whole banking system the central bank will immediatly notice this and instead of having banks trying to loan from eachother the central bank will just push a buttom an like magic all the commercials banks accounts with the central bank and out of the red.
They have to pay an interested rate for this yes, the one the set by the central bank.
What this means is that the lender of last resort can completley dictate the interest rate in the entire market.
If the Fed sets it’s interested rate to 0% it is free for banks to loan out more money then they have and they just get to loan more and more free money from the Fed to cover the deficit in there Fed account. They will not have any incetives to raise any interest rates on there own before everyone they can legally lend money too is at there maximum legally allowed debt with them, or they are in violation of reserve laws cause there Fed debt is running too high…
No. And I wouldn’t recommend taking other peoples advise. Especially from blogs and talking heads of the investors crowd. They’re all speculators, and they’re usually more wrong then right.
THe best thing for you to do is get your feet wet. If your reluctant to get started set 500 to a few grand aside and start playing with it. Don’t be afraid to lose some of it. Your better off being a bit aggressive if your young.
THe world of stocks and investing is extremely esoteric. THe best way to learn it is by doing.
Clayton Slade: Silver lagged gold. Look at a chart comparing silver to gold for the last few years. Silver lagged gold quite a bit. It was ~$20 give or take while gold went from $600 to $1400
Industrial demand for silver is substantial these days so the price tends to be driven to follow the business cycle to a noticable amount … unlike gold.
Cheers Clayton. Pick up any European automotive manufacturer which isn’t a complete luxury brand (Porsche, Ferrari etc) and look at sales in the 2009 and in the first three quarters of 2010, then take a look at stocks. Sales have been dropping a steady 5-6% by quarter and judging by European registration figures (November 2010 was down 26% compared to the already poor 2009) they could be even worse for the last 2010 quarter but figures will be released in a few weeks. While I understand Volkswagen Group stocks may be promising since they recently entered the Indian market by purchasing Suzuki’s car division (which includes the best selling Maruti brand), the others have little to show to their credit, especially Italian and French companies which, besides poor sales, especially in the lucrative commercial sector, are beset by labor and productivity issues. Yet these stocks have been on a steady rise since March: not even the announcement of worse than expected sales in the second and third quarter has stopped them.
An average person like myself have no access to the US stock market: fees and taxes would make any profit negligible to say the least. I am limited to this side of the Atlantic. Last year we made a nice bundle with Pharma stocks: I know most of you will hate me for this but we clearly betted on good profits following the “swine flu” hysteria and it paid off big time. We sold just after people started getting inoculated and the mass media were still hammering on the issue… was fun and profitable but if I didn’t have my brother’s help I wouldn’t have been able to do it properly.
Haha, dude, I don’t think anyone at all would hate you for that. Half of the chaos was the government, half of the chaos was mainstream media. I would have tried to make a profit off the situation if I knew how. That’s really cool!