Investing In Gold: To Buy Or Not To Buy?

I have always had this idea that gold was the ultimate investing option. For some reason, me and people around me have this idea that if you have money, it is wiser to not keep it as cash but convert it to gold instead.

And, at the moment, as I was looking for more money investing ways, I thought, “Gold!”

But, since I am approaching this in a serious manner and dedicating my time to finding the best investing methods, I decided not to just follow my inherited idea of how brilliant an investment this would make and actually do some research, listen to what some of the experts say, read statistics, and find actual evidence on whether or not it would be as good of an investment as I, and most people I know, think it is.

The short answer to this question is: Gold is not an investment, but yes, you should buy gold. The longer and elaborate answer would be this post.

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Investing In Gold:

• Why Is Gold Valuable?
• Why Should You Buy Gold?
• How Do You Invest In Gold?
• What Are the Cons to Buying Gold?
• Conclusion

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Why Is Gold Valuable?

Gold is currently the world’s most traded precious metal and its value goes way back to ancient history where it was used for trading in the form of gold coins.

And, nowadays, it goes into many industries; the largest would be jewelry, of course, which takes up about 50% of the gold demand. Then there’s 40% that goes into direct physical investment in gold, including gold used to create coins, medals, and gold bars. The remaining demand for gold comes from industry, for use in things such as dentistry, heat shields, and tech gadgets. 

And while gold is available in nature, it is quite difficult to extract, which is why it is considered a rare metal and a scarce asset in comparison to its demand.

Extracting gold is a very costly process, it takes many years and a lot of preparations and equipment. And because gold is usually not the only metal available in a gold mine, for example, it is mostly mixed with other metals, so unless the mining companies are certain that this mine will have enough gold supply to cover all the expenses, they wouldn’t go ahead and extract it.

Gold has other values such as the powerful nature of the metal itself that can’t be destroyed by time, water, or fire.

There is a really good article on the value of gold that lists the 5 most overlooked values, if you want to know more reasons as to why gold is such a valuable metal.

Why Should You Buy Gold?

Gold is a lot easier to liquidate than, say, a house or a piece of land. There is always a market for gold.

Another thing is that gold has proven to have a strong value as an asset. For example, when the stock market fell all over the world around 2008, gold has skyrocketed in price. But while the stock market prices risen back, gold still kept its value and hasn’t fell all the way back contrary to what was predicted; it just keeps rising.

It appears that gold prices often rise in response to negative economic news or a serious drop in the stock market, unlike oil, for example. So it serves as a safe option to invest your money if you’re looking for a long-term and an almost risk-free way to save your money.

As for the case in Egypt, for instance, there was a huge rise in the price of gold around 2017 following the decision of floating the Egyptian pound as can be seen in the below graph. This has definitely created an insane profit for gold owners at that time.

And before that, between 2011 and 2013, the post-revolution time, which has seriously affected the country’s economy at the time, has also lead to a noticeable rise in gold prices.

Many economists and investors around the world have been predicting a possible fall that would hit the stock market which would be similar to the one that took place in 2008; this could mean an obvious rise in commodities such as gold.

And with the current change in the world economy that is caused by the coronavirus pandemic, these has become less of speculations and more of an expected outcome.

However, whether these predictions are true or not, I think it is certainly wise to still include gold to be a part of your investment portfolio either ways.

You can check this website for Live Gold Price everywhere in the world. At the time of the initial writing of this article (Feb 2019), one gram of gold cost 747.46 EGP (42.49 USD).

At the time of updating this article (Apr 2020), the price of one gram of gold has gone up to be 874.56 EGP (55.42 USD); which further proves the point that gold mostly only goes up whenever the economy takes a hit; in this case it is the coronavirus pandemic.

This is another graph showing how the price of gold has changed over the past year alone, from May 2019 to April 2020.

I’m obviously no expert, so I have no idea if gold prices are going to be moving up or down from there, but I say just go ahead and buy a little bit of it every now and then, as in gradually add it to your investments.

Otherwise, you may need to consult an expert who can make such judgment calls on the best timing to make a purchase based on how they see the market now and in the near future.

If you want to read a more extensive study on how gold has been performing over the years and why it is a good time to start investing in it, check out this report on the relevance of gold as a strategy asset in 2020.

How Do You Invest In Gold?

First of all, I need to make one tiny clarification: Despite using the word “investment” in this post, but as far as I see it, storing your money in a gold bar is not an investment, it is only that, “storage.”

Gold is a way to save your money. But instead of saving it in a bank account, you decide to save it in gold, in hopes that in the case of currency inflation or some global economy crisis your money will not lose its value because it is now gold which has proven over the years that it is a valuable metal and will always be in demand by both individuals and industries.

And while you can certainly benefit from a price difference between the time you buy it and the time you decide to sell it, I’d still not call it a real investment, because first of all, a huge rise in price is not guaranteed and second, normally, if it did happen, this can take a really long time for the prices to differ to the point that you would actually make a decent profit out of it.

Now that we got this out of the way, let’s move on to the how part. There are multiple ways where you can put your money in gold.

1. Jewelry

The most common method and the easiest to find is gold jewelry. They differ in the price and value depending on their weight and purity.

However, these may not yield a decent profit because most of the time you will be paying for both the metal plus the work done on the jewelry. So, if you will buy jewelry as an investment option, you may want to check pieces of jewelry that don’t have much work done on them.

2. Bars

The second option is to buy it in the form of gold bars; these would differ in price depending on their weight. Bars of gold are recognized as at least 99.5% pure gold.

This is a better option than jewelry because there is almost no work done on the gold and therefore you are only paying for the pure metal. But it can also be a little bit harder to sell them.

3. Coins

Another way to own physical gold is to buy gold coins. These can also have other mixed metals to them but they usually have the percentage of gold they contain carved on them.

However, like jewelry, you may also be paying for the work done to create the coin shape.

4. ETFs

Investing in a gold exchange-traded fund is buying stock in a company that buys and sells gold. This way you are investing in gold without actually buying and owning it.

This one is a good method because it saves you the burden of taking care of physical gold possession, but the downside to it is that it has fees both to put an investment and periodic management fees for your account. So you will need to make sure that you are not paying too much in fees that you are not actually making enough profit.

5. Mining stocks

This is another way to put your money in gold without actually owning any physical gold. Instead of buying gold, you buy stocks in a gold mining company.

The prices of the gold mines follow the prices of the gold itself, but you also invest in the actual production of gold by a mining company.

The downside to this one is that the mining business is full of risks including possible natural disasters or a mine collapsing. So this option is probably not for everyone.

What Are the Cons to Buying Gold?

Most people who are against buying gold and even those who encourage you to buy it agree that there are some disadvantages to owning it.

1. Saving expenses

If you will be opting for options like gold bars, jewelry, or coins, no one thinks it such a good idea to keep gold simply in your closet or a drawer.

So you will probably either need to buy a safe or consider renting a safe in a bank which would offer more security, for example, but is something that will require monthly payments.

So, in the short term, it will be adding expenses instead of giving interest.

2. No interest

Gold is considered a non-yielding asset. As mentioned earlier, buying gold is merely just saving your money.

So unlike the ability to rent a house you own and making money off of it, for example, you will not be getting any interests from the money you put in an asset like gold.

3. Low profits

Unless there is some global economic crisis or a huge financial turbulence, like the currency inflation in Egypt that lead to huge rise in prices, or the current coronavirus pandemic that lead to gold hitting an all-time high, gold prices are usually steady.

As you could see from the earlier graph, in normal circumstances, it takes many years to start noticing a significant difference in prices.

So, gold in general is not going to make you huge profits as an investment.

Conclusion

From what I have read and learned so far, gold should definitely be part of your investments for its undeniable value, and as a form of security, and to diversify your investment portfolio, but it shouldn’t be your main and only focus, or even a big part of it. Because that is just money put on hold.

It is believed that you should invest in gold with only 5%-10% of your money and put the rest of it in other types of investments.

If you don’t own gold…there is no sensible reason other than you don’t know history or you don’t know the economics of it.

Ray Dalio

Till next week, happy days!

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Related Books

• Guide To Investing In Gold & Silver: Protect Your Financial Future

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