Gold at $1,000, gold at $1,100, gold at $1,200-where will it end? And more to the point how will you get yours?
Advisers talk about balanced portfolios, but the portfolio ballasted with gold is surely sturdier.
Jason Cozens, a serial internet entrepreneur, was looking into investing in gold but found the range of options- buying shares in a gold producer or a gold mine, buying bullion, buying an ETF- too numerous and their restrictions too laborious. Apart from a few shops (notably Harrods- where else?), one cannot buy bullion over the counter, and when one does buy a share of some gold, it is rarely allocated and deliverable. If you want to touch it, tough luck.
That is why Jason decided to set up goldmadesimple.com, through which one can buy gold with a .9999 purity rating from members of London Bullion Market Association and have it delivered, which is unusual-most gold, being a fraction of an ingot, sits in some dank Swiss vault, miles underground and probably guarded by dragons. The website offers real-time prices and a buy back guarantee, 2 percent below spot price.
The ‘safe haven’ aspect is one Jason is keen to stress, saying that ‘this experiment with paper currencies has led us into this mess’. His pessimism about the inevitable problems caused by quantitative easing (‘It calms the populace-until it has to take its medicine’) and the like is only matched by bullish optimism about gold.
Financial notice: the price of gold may go up as well as down.