Switching my silver to gold is one of my goals for someday when the time is right. It's mostly just a fun savings for me and the most effective way of not blowing through my cash which seems to go really fast. I can have fun buying metals and spending it and the best part is, when I get home I still have my money....just in a metal form instead of cash. I've never had buyers remorse from buying silver or gold that's for sure! Like I said it's an effective way to save over time and it works great for me. Theres no other way I can seem to save as easy as this and then just forget about it.
I think alot of people use the word investment nowadays and the meaning has changed. The governments use it in every spending speech and every penny of the spending is for "investments" into something. None of it is actual investments but it's used as a loose term. They say they are investing instead of saying they are spending, it sounds better and safer, not something that would need to be questioned. None of the spending will generate a return. It's used as a broad term. For a trader or dealer that is active in buying and selling it could be an investment into future returns.
I would have written the same thing. No buyers remorse except when I have to move the silver stash and think gosh gold would be a lot easier.
Unfortunately I missed that opportunity too as I sold the coin a year later. People usually look at past trends to determine future value and gold had been falling and dead since 1980 when it was $800. In the early 2000s, stocks were the in thing. You’ll have to be really an extreme gold bug or coin collector to be buying gold at that time.
I remember that time. I looked at gold and thought of buying several kg’s at the time. Having not acted on those thoughts you can imagine how I feel about that now. Life goes on. There are always other opportunities.
I think there is still time to buy gold. Gold is very cunning, it will Zig zag for sometime as it had done since 2015 with only a gradual upwards trend over the course of a couple of years with periodic smack downs. I got threw off at least three times because of this Zig zagging. It happened again in 2008 when gold corrected sharply when the stock market rallied that year. The same case for silver. This is why I buy physical, paper and ETF is too easy to sell in a smack down. The fluctuation of the USD is another problem. The USD is currently strong but if the USD weakens, gold in local currency can be relatively stagnant even if the price of gold in USD rises. Yes, this is right, with falling interest rates, I'm looking at other forms of investments, tech and energy stocks. But stocks are expensive. There were plenty of other opportunities back then in 2000, property is a big winner. Ironically, stocks on a whole didn't do that well. One of the things I've learnt is that stock indices are misleading because stocks that are not doing well are booted out so the index will always look better than the actual stock market.
I don't think any stocks, bonds, treasuries would be a good investment now, pre-crisis. I'd stay away.
Silver could take a large dip down due to lower industrial demand. Lower industrial production, slower Chinese economy... Is it worth buying silver now? Gold I understand (as a king of safe haven), but silver?
I don’t think anyone can answer that question as it is really an investment strategy and what’s your timeline. Silver is not for short term. By the way, Silver Mining stocks are doing much better than gold mining stocks. Check GDX vs SIL. SIL is near all time high. The rich are buying up silver mines.
JP Morgan is buying on behalf of China for a simple reason, it’s a strategic metal for electronics and solar panels with primary mines usually found only in Mexico, and should one day the Mexican government gets it’s act together and restrict silver mining just like what Russia is doing for Palladium, the price of silver will double. So buy it while it is cheap. If you look at the price of silver miners (SIL and SILJ) which has gone up much more than gold miners and still near the highs in August, Sept, you will know that the rich are buying up silver mines quietly while silver is still cheap. They buy quietly because there are so few high quality primary silver mines in the world. The same thing happened when bitcoin was a couple dollars, people were mining and the whales were buying quietly. Smart money can wait because they have the holding power. Once they have bought enough of it on the cheap, they can control supply (restrict mine supply) and corner the market.
For anyone interested, you can take a look at this scientific paper on silver supply published in 2018. I did this googling research more than a year ago when I started buying silver. It's good to know the fundamentals as it will eventually impact prices. Not saying silver will go to the moon, but the low prices actually encourages buying and more mining and only serves to bring forward future supply. Not to mention the impact on the environment - I'll no environmentalist anyway. I mean, you can print money, print property (built using printed money), print labour and people (immigration), but you can't print silver and copper once the easily accessible ores are exhausted. The money printing will only lead to quicker exhaustion of natural resources. https://www.researchgate.net/public...World-Leading_Primary_Silver_Mines_Exhausting