Questions about Gold

[Nonbryan]

I have a friend that is running for the hills and has been buying up gold as a investment. I can't figure out if he's crazy or genius. I wanted to ask Hornfans your opinion on this. First, is gold a good safe place to put your $ right now and second, do you literally go buy bricks of gold or is there a stock, etf, or whatever that you just buy shares of?

 

[zork]

you can do either. stock is easier to store but is not as good if the doomsday scenarios occur that some of the gold bugs lived for through out history.

storage is generally a cost you need to consider when figuring out if you want to own precious metals. gold doesn't draw interest/dividends either.

It is an arbitrary store of value but there is a market for it. As to that, real quick, go ask the dealer about how much you could sell the same volume/quality of gold you are about to purchase from said dealer for x price. that x-y price is your spread for that dealer. ask other dealers too, those that are not vested with you about to make a purchase. There can be 10-20% markdowns if you need to sell.(big buy/sell spreads)

that is one reason why people would say not to invest money you actually will be using in the near future in an investment like gold.

generally never more than 5 to 10% of a total portfolio historically has been the norm, if that.