What about investing in silver, gold, platinum, palladium or other metals? Is that a way to avoid the unpredictability of the stock market?
Let’s compare:
Stocks Precious Metals
An asset that produces income An asset that produces nothing
Price based on profits and speculators Price fluctuates based on speculators
Typically outpaces inflation Price increase should only match inflation
To be fair, precious metals tend to not correlate with stocks, so they might not be useless in small enough quantities. Just remember that the guys touting how wonderful precious metals are compared to dollars believe prefer your dollars to their metals.
False Claim 1: Precious metals provide stability and give you a good return.
- To put it bluntly, the stock market mops the floor with precious metals over the long term and most of the time in the shorter term. For a decade by decade, fair minded look at the returns from gold, see A History of Gold Returns.
False Claim 2: “silver is money”:
- Can you buy a hamburger with it? How about new shoes?
False Claim 3: “silver is what you want if everything falls apart” is also false.
- If civilization collapses, would you rather have: food, tools, clothing, or the raw material for jewelry?
