Definitely not paranoid jamielee, fiat currencies (those backed by nothing except a government guarantee) are always at the risk of being devalued by central banks printing too much money and flooding the money supply. In my opinion, we're not there yet, although there's definitely some commodity and tech bubble inflation going on already because of all that hot money.

Still, I wouldn't invest in gold to counteract it. I'd rather invest in companies that are poised to do well in inflationary times, like mining stocks and possibility agricultural stocks. I would stay away from banks and competitive retailers in inflationary times -- banks lose money because their debt is marked in dollars and doesn't account for inflation, meaning borrowers are paying them back with cheaper dollars, and competitive retailers don't have much pricing power and struggle to raise their prices even in inflationary times.

Honestly, there is a valid point to investing in either physical gold and in gold stocks.

There are however, differences. When it comes to gold, there is no counter-party risk. Your gold cannot default on you. However, gold stocks can go bankrupt, you just have to be a little more careful when it comes to investing in companies. The other thing you have to keep in mind when it comes to mining stocks is that if we were in an highly inflationary environment and gold was rising very quickly, the cost of mining gold would also increase quickly, so there is a flip side to stock investing.

As it comes to buying ETF's versus buying physical, I say buy physical. There is no doubt that there is more convenience when it comes to buying ETF's. The problem is that there is a risk that the ETF's (like GLD and SLV) don't actually own the physical gold and silver that they say they own. Instead they probably they own futures contracts. IF you read their prospectuses, you would see that legally they are protected from anyone suing them for not owning the physical metal.

There are, however, ETF's that are 100% backed by physical gold and silver on a 1 to 1 ratio by taking physical possession of the metal. There is PHYS for gold and PSLV for silver.

FYI, I do personally own physical gold and silver.

Great points StickyTape, especially about the counter-party risk and also the rising costs for miners in inflationary times. Another thing to think about that is that traditionally, gold miners have been a kind of leveraged play on gold because their stock prices tend to rise very quickly in a higher gold environment and fall very rapidly when gold stalls -- a consequence of the fact that as a mining company, they're valued on earnings on their profit margins of mining the yellow metal, and small movements in gold can make them very profitable or very unprofitable in a short period of time.

I personally wouldn't invest in physical gold if i was thinking short to midterm (holding less than 5 years), just because if you're buying and selling physical gold more often than that, you're really losing a lot in transaction costs.

SilverTape, what's your view on the current gold price?

Also love to get your thoughts on silver on the silver thread: www.wealthlift.com/forum/commodities/68-...-alternative-to-gold

What is a good way to go about buying physical gold? What are some good places to start looking?

I think gold is the best investment sicne the stock market is quite difficult to forsee what is gonna hapen

Right now I would say now is a good time to sell gold. With the stock market turning and analysis saying the bottom has been hit, gold is something you don't want to be holding. For the most part it moves inversely to the stock market. So stock might be something you want to look into as they are on the rise.

Unless you feel what I stated above is incorrect and you think the stock market will go down and gold to go up, then yes you might want to consider investing.