calmloki
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
It is important to understand an investment as much as possible. GOLD pays no dividends. But it does appear to go up MOST but not all the time when other things go down, and some hedge against inflation-- hence providing some ballast---In a balanced portfolio. That means REBALANCING. Selling Gold when it is up, to bring the allocation back into balance. If one owns Physical Gold - selling generates a special tax burden at 28% in the US...if one owns gold via the ETF GLD, that is taxed like other investments. So if they are determined to own gold they may want to reconsider whether it is for the physical vs the asset allocation they want.
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Owning other than physical gold (by preference sewn into one's garments) seems like a misunderstanding of one of the biggest reasons to own gold: ability to bribe or do business to get out of the country in case of dire emergency (escaping Viet Nam as the US was leaving for example). It is serious sh*t going down escape protection. Yeah, yeah, lead beats gold, but there are probably more that bribed their way out of a situation than gunned their way out. Not saying that isn't wacky thinking, but if one can afford it isn't some protection against collapse of government reasonable?
Just checked - we have, by pure accident, 0.5% of our assets in gold and silver at present.