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Here in Greece when people want go they'll go to a bank and buy British gold pounds ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_(British_coin) ). I'm not sure there's a limit; you can buy as many as you want.
I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…
So gold isn't even a good inflation hedge: if you walked the streets of a failing economy (pick one: Argentina, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, there's plenty more) and tried to exchange gold for goods, you're not gonna get far (and will probably get mugged). You have to figure out how to convert that gold into something somebody will actually take, and that seems like the hard part.
I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's incredibly odd. Most US large ETFs and crypto have basically been in lockstep for much of the last few years. Same with housing, delayed a bit. It seems to indicate that that we're seeing when we look at the price of these assets is largely just a map of inflation rather than a substantial increase in value (i.e. just a graph of non-USD assets going up in terms of USD as real value of USD decreases). The ea…
There are whisperings in the investment community that the market is manipulated. Almost all gold trading is ETFs, and their gold holdings are managed by a chain of custodians several layers deep, none of which conduct public audits. The terms of the ETFs make it clear that they are completely absolved from any risks and responsibility for the holdings. At the same time, the practice of leasing out the gold in the va…
I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…
I’m not sure an economist (a mainstream economist) would really care that much about an individual holding gold. Maybe there’s an interesting behavioral question about why people become so paranoid about the value of the dollar when it’s proven to be so incredibly stable (yes, even with the recent spike in inflation—it’s nothing close to hyperinflation). But people going to Costco and buying gold doesn’t have an effe…
Because we live in very uncertain times: a land-grab war in continental Europe, a serious and credible threat of both the US and a lot of European countries to fall to fascism, the threat of the US government going into an unprecedented shutdown yet again, and if that were not enough, it's reasonable to assume there will be an actual hot war with China in a few years' time.
Historically, people have always fled towards gold in uncertain times.
I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…
Physical gold might have value in situation where financial institutions and markets start to lose any trust in themselves. Either by manipulation, government confiscation or fraud. But, things will be pretty bad at that point from every viewpoint. As essentially global markets are crashing. On other hand, in even bigger crisis gold won't be that valuable at least for a while. If food and fuel are first priority peop…
>For example, the company markets a 150-serving emergency food preparedness kit that could come in handy, you know, just in case. Gold meshes with that type of product.
>“They’ve done their market research. I think it’s a very clever way to get their name in the news and have some great publicity
This is the crux of the trend. I actually pick up one of these food preparedness kits every time I make a trip to Costco. They have a 25 year shelf life and have 25 servings of food. At $60 each (in the store, the online price is higher for some reason), that's the cheapest insurance policy I can think of, I'll take it.
But really they are cashing in on the growing sense of uncertainty about the future that many Americans are feeling.
I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…
I just think it's neat to have
People invest/collect gold like this and it clearly only profitable for the people who buy and sell gold who charge you to do both.
I also think it's a hobby. Like people collect this or coins or stamps or Pokémon cards. I think as far as things to spend your time on for entertainment, you loose the lease amount on this compared to collecting other things or spending the time you spend on this entertainment doing another form of entertainment.
It's not investment unless your scrooge mcduck and have a big gold factory, it's really entertainment like collecting baseball cards.
Spot price appears to be manipulated for quite a while. Lots of demand for precious metals, yet the price isn't really going up, especially with inflation.
Gold as a store of value works better when the world is using it as a reserve, but they don’t anymore so it is just like any other limited supply commodity and doesn’t necessarily need to go up in price due to inflation. It only will go up due to emotion.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/central-banks-bo... [2] https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/gold-repo...
Over a hundred years ago, that pan would have been something only for the most wealthy in the world.
Only a matter of time before the same happens to gold