Alternative investments: Despite the fact that our job is to find the best worldwide investments and that we have identified Vietnamese stocks and the Houston property market to be the current best investments, your choices as an investor are not limited to these two types of investment. There are many alternative types of investment, commodity is one of them, art is another. What about investing in crypto-currencies like Bitcoin? Let’s focus today on gold.
Investors can invest in gold through exchange-traded funds (ETFs), buying stock in gold miners and associated companies, and buying physical product. These investors have as many reasons for investing in the metal as they do methods to make those investments. Some argue that gold is a barbaric relic that no longer holds the monetary qualities of the past. In a modern economic environment, paper currency is the money of choice. Gold can be a good investment but only if you have a strongly pessimistic view of the economy. Never forget one thing though: timing the market is close to impossible. Gold is not a good investment on the long term. Why? First of all gold do not pay dividend. Secondly, performance tend to be poor when you adjust them for inflation. In other words, over the long term and in real term, an investment in gold returns around 1% per year. A terrible number especially when you consider that gold is a much riskier investment than many people believe. Gold is volatile, gold is risky and physical gold is even worse.