Should you buy gold while a lot of analysts are calling the recent high point a peak, a bubble and no chance of getting above $1000 again? While we can’t really say what you personally should do, that depends on your personal finance situation. We can give you our opinions.

Look at it this way. Commodities are at all time highs. The world is “expanding” with globilization. Money is being made by people who have never seen a $100 in their life before let alone thousands. With that money comes the ability to buy items like jewelry, computers, and other non-essential needs (although computers are becoming increasingly essential.)

Oil is rising. Although the bubble may burst, this is highly unlikely considering that the whole world, as mentioned, is expanding and the need for oil in China and India is helping drive costs. If oil goes up, other commodities rise, the need demand for precious metals doesn’t dwindle, why would it not climb?

Inflation, Inflation, Inflation. Inflation is driving up the cost of a lot of goods. Do you really think the price of milk or a candy bar is going back down? Although I realize that these aren’t perfect comparisons you get the idea. The value of a dollar is going down, prices of tangible goods are going up. If dollars are being produced more and more to cover our nation, is the government going to start pulling more twenties out of circulation once the economy recovers? Probably not.

There are probably a bunch more reasons why investing in gold is a good idea, even at this peak. But then again, everyone’s personal finance story is different. So choose where you money goes wisely. Gold may not be the best investment for everyone.

Buying gold right now might seem crazy to some. The price has been rising rapidly, oil and other commodities have been shooting through the roof, and theres talk of an oil bubble about to burst.

So what is the common investor to do?

If you ask us, we would say buy gold. Why? Inflation is here, demand is up, and gold has dropped way off it’s high from a few months ago. Being able to invest in these times might be a great idea to even the most timid investors. And you don’t have to go spending thousands on gold bullion. You can buy just an ETF and get in on the action like that.

As we’ve suggested in the past you can buy a gold ETF like IAU from iShares, a great ETF company that provides all sorts of sector ETFs like precious metals and other commodities.

Once again, the price of $870 or so per ounce seems like a great price to buy at.

The dollar finally had a little bump yesterday against the Euro which sent precious metals retreating after making large moves last week. Oil has been trying to help gold buyers regain some confidence in the metal but to no avail.

Gold, for the second straight day, fell $20 plus per ounce in trading. Gold stands at less than $870 per ounce while just Friday it closed at over $900. The Fed signals which have been making gold prices bounce around are at it again. Today with talks of a fed rate hike on the horizon, gold was not good for those invested.

However, those looking to purchase gold may be able to buy gold at a quite a discount to recent highs. Those willing to risk more possible pullbacks could be able to get into gold now and wait for the next run-up. Although we can’t be sure there will be another precious metals rally, the erratic market would tend to lend to these types of spikes in safer investments like gold.

Gold prices are down, dollars per ounce. The price of gold is around $880 per ounce and has dropped off dramatically in the last two months. For investors who haven’t gotten in on this run-up yet that could spell a great buying time.

We’ve already seen the price of gold make huge strides toward $1000 per ounce and now with gas in the US creeping over $4 per gallon, the price of gold could follow up just the same. A new article, on the front page of money.com talks about .

Now may be the best time to buy into the gold rush before it happens. One of the easiest ways to get into that is to buy a gold etf like GLD. It’s easy and not as expensive as buying and storing gold bullion.

Buying gold has been good choice for the past year. Huge gains have made a lot of investors who dumped the dollar, dumped stocks, a lot of money. The price of gold reached $1000 per ounce not too long ago and looked like it wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

Then the stock market came around, the housing bust didn’t seem like such a bust anymore and the world wasn’t so sour on the dollar. The price of gold quickly dropped below $900 per ounce. And it has stayed there ever since, bouncing every once in a while but then profit taking takes over to bring it back down.

Is the reason for the drop a good reason? Not sure, but the dollar is still down, the market isn’t turned around that much, and oil is still rising rising rising. If oil is on it’s way up and inflation seems like its going to be the tale of the summer, why the pull back in gold?

If anything, I would think the price of gold would continue to rise, but we shall see.

A great way to get into the precious metals craze going on right now is to look towards mining and producing companies dealing with precious metals such as gold. One of those gold mining stocks is Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE:AEM) located out of Toronto, ON. At the time of this writing AEM was trading at just over $70 per share with a market capitalization of $10 billion.

AEM produces gold through it’s gold mining operations located in northwestern Quebec as well as mine construction projects in that same location. Agnico-Eagle is also mine construction projects located in Finland and Mexico with exploration operations in all of those countries as well as the United States.

Over the past year the companies stock as increased 86% fueled no doubt by the huge climb in gold prices. The company claims large potential for growth through press releases found on it’s website where Agnico-Eagle boasts that its largest mine is the 100% owned LaRonde mine. LaRonde is Canada’s largest gold deposit in terms of reserves. This has allowed AEM to have low operating costs and provide the company with other previous metals such as silver, zinc, and copper which are byproducts of the mine. Development at LaRonde is expected to keep the mine going through 2020.

Other gold mines the company is constructing hope to add to this growth and include Kittila in Finland and Meadowbank, Lapa, and Goldex in Canada. From 2006 to 2007 Agnico increased it’s gold reserves by 33% and looks to increase those reserves by 5 five over the next 2 years. They also are looking to produce over 350,000 more ounces of gold this year than they did in the previous year.

Their stock, however, appears to show this growth already factored into the price as it trades at a P/E ratio of 69. Is this a case of investors loving the stock because of it’s potential growth, or investors joining the bandwagon of buying gold in a bull precious metals market.

Recently we discussed the iShares ETF IAU which is a gold trust ETF like the silver trust ETF SLV. Now here’s another one that, if you’re into ETFs, you may be interested in. It’s called streetTRACKS Gold Trust (GLD).

Like IAU and SLV, GLD buys and stores gold and allows investors to buy a share of the gold it owns. The price basically tracks the price of gold per ounce at about 1/10th the value of an ounce of gold. Fees are taken off for running the fund, which is the reason for not tracking the price exactly.

Currently, the precious metals market has been taking off as investors try and find a safer place to put their money than the stock market. If you want to buy gold, rather than buy gold bullion, you can purchase gold through the ETF and take advantage of long term capital gains tax benefits. If you buy gold bars or coins you’ll need to pay full capital gains taxes.

These are just some of the advantages that buying gold through ETFs such as IAU and GLD can offer.

If you want to get into gold and you don’t want have gold bullion collecting dust in the corner of your safe deposit box, then an iShares electronically traded fund might be the way to go for you. With iShares IAU ETF you can own a fractional ownership of gold held by the iShares Gold Trust.

Rather than own large sums of gold you own roughly 1/10th an ounce of gold per share you own in the iShares trust. And the best part is, you can trade these easily from your regular stock trading account. This means if you buy and hold you can take advantage of long term capital gains rules rather than taking the sale of a gold bar as a fully taxed gain, as you would do if you owned gold bars.

Some people say they want to be able to hold the gold, but those same people don’t realize that when they buy stock in a company they have nothing to hold, so why not do the same with buying gold. The ETF IAU will allow you to own a piece of a precious metal that has historically held it’s value. And with the spread of wealth around the world increasing, demand for gold can only go up (or so we think).

Buying gold now during this volatile time period may be risky, but if you hold long enough, we imagine that owning an ETF like IAU will prove to be very valuable, and easy to trade.