Gold Rushed: Investing in Gold

While we’re not going to give a buy recommendation on gold right now we do think it’s one to watch. Nearly $300 off it’s high of earlier in the year, an ounce of gold may be the place to put your money during this possible inflationary time.

But nobody is giving any recommendations lately.  Not on stocks, nor bonds, not even on currencies. There is just wordwide uncertainty in all markets.

However, if we don’t have deflation, and in fact have a period of inflation, investors may flock to silver and gold and start buying gold bars.  Most likely though, they will start buying ETF’s like GLD and SLV.  These ETFs start buying up gold which increases the demand for gold thus raising the price.

However, the demand worldwide for gold may be reduced by lower production of all goods and services in the world, including China and India.

Either way, buying gold now, at these low prices, may still prove to be a good idea.

Buying gold right now, amidst a failed Wall Street bailout bill from congress may be the only way to safeguard your money.  Banks are failing right now and that means there is a chance, even though a small one, that you could loose your money you have with those banks.

Now if you have less than $100,000 at each financial institution you could be safe.  But, your money could be tied up for a while trying to get it back essentially from FDIC.

Investing in and buying gold on the other hand may be the safer way to go.  It’s real money. It’s what your dollar used to be based on before we went off it.  Gold still has universal value around the world.  Although there have been many other things created which could probably win you a few points in a barter, gold is the precious metal that wins out time and time again.

So don’t go throwing out that old jewelery,  don’t look past those flakes your grandma gavea you when you were younger and maybe take a look at some of the options you have out there to buy gold.  Such as gold ETFs like IAU.

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.

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.

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.