InvestGold India

India has long been reknowned as the last gold standard nation, where, perhaps, the memory of some long-ago fiat money crisis is so ingrained into the population, that they still perceive gold as the ultimate store of value. With this in mind, Invest Gold has now launched an Indian version of it's site, which can be seen at InvestGold India.

Why Silver is on the up too

Gold is a purer representative of true wealth than silver. Although both metals have been heavily used throughout history as currency and to represent wealth, Gold has few uses apart from as money, whereas Silver is a heavily used industrial commodity and that can affect its price and desirability outside of any investment considerations. For example, some commentators are convinced that the rise of digital photography and the resultant downturn in traditional photography will result in a massive decrease in demand for silver, affecting the price as a result. This may or may not turn out to be true.

As a much used industrial commodity, it is in the best interests of many to keep the price as low as possible for as long as possible. It is thought by many commentators that the price has been manipulated for many years to be artificially low, and is in no way representative of how much Silver exists in physical form. For example, on COMEX, the main New York USA exchange for trading silver, there may be more short sales than there is silver to back them up. If this is true, then imagine what would happen if those sellers were all forced to buy silver on the open market to meet their promises? And more importantly, would they even be able to? In the USA, there is even a Silver Users Association, representing the viewpoint of businesses that consume silver, and lobbying government when necessary to protect those interests. They successfully managed to delay, but not stop, the introduction of the first ever Silver investment fund, the Barclays iShares Silver ETF in 2006 (for an explanation of ETFs, see the Exchange-Traded Funds chapter).

You can read more about this, and other gold and silver government conspiracies, in the new book on How to Invest in Gold and Silver. It will repay its purchase price many times over.

BullionVault Explained

Founded by Paul Tustain, Bullionvault is UK-based, although an additionally interesting feature is the ability to store your gold in their New York, London or Zurich gold vaults. Dependent on which country you are a citizen of, you will probably feel most comfortable placing your gold outside of that country so that is not subject to your local government jurisdiction, so top marks for considering that feature.

BullionVault allows you to buy and sell Gold on their impressive looking trading platform, where buyers and sellers of gold from each vault can meet and state their required selling/buying prices, so if you are more inclined to hold gold, occasionally sell on a dip, then buy in again later, then this could well be the best service for you.

Their fees for transactions and monthly storage are really low too, so they are very worthy of investigation. The storage fee is currently $4 per month fixed, regardless of holding size, and only payable for the months in which you held Gold.

Again, Bullionvault has proved popular with Gold Bugs accumulating gold for the future financial crisis they believe is in the offing.

Payment in to BullionVault is by bank transfer. Payment out is by bank wire transfer to your chosen bank account. A fee of approximately $30 is charged for this transfer, although there may be possibilities for UK residents to request a BACs transfer instead, which can take a few days but will not attract a fee.

BullionVault are currently offering a free gram of gold to all new account openings, which you can then use to experiment with trading in their system. Even if you open an account, you are not committed in any way, so well worth trying out to see if it’s for you. Visit http://www.investgold.co.uk to learn more.

Overall, Bullionvault is an excellent service. Both they and E-gold seem like decent operations, with much security behind them.

Gold Investing Scams

Following on from my earlier posts, and my warnings in my book, "How to Invest in Gold and Silver", I was intrigued to spot this is the Google Ads.

Investment Forex online are offering amazing profits of 10% or more, per day! Of course, the money must go through E-gold or E-Bullion, so anonimity and non-refundable cash, which more naive investors fail to realise.

There are no links to any contacts or meaningful sources of who might own this site, but If any of their representatives contact me and prove otherwise, I think it's a scam!

The Big Government Inflation Game

When it comes to the official government inflation figures, these often understate true increases in the cost of living, due to the statistical reporting methods used. As the famous old adage goes, there are "lies, damned lies and statistics", and nowhere could this be truer than here. One trick is to reduce the real price still further if the assumed quality of an item included in the basket of goods has gone up in quality. For example, a 2007 computer could be classified as ten times more powerful than a 1997 computer, and even though they have the same retail price of say, £1,000; the figures are adjusted downward due to the increased processing power: whether you really needed that extra processing power, or whether it is even possible to buy a 1997 specification computer is not considered. Another trick is replacement, or substitution theory, where, say, if high quality beef rises in price, then it is assumed that many households will trade down to cheaper beef, or even some other type of meat.

Neither of these sound like correct ways to measure price increases in anything, but they do sound like nice ways to massage the true inflation figure downward.

What's the best way to get yourself and your savings outside of the inflationary, currency devaluation, welath destruction cycle? Buy Gold and Silver, and any other commodities you use in your daily life. Historically proven to usually work.

Invest Gold UK

This blog has been created in conjunction with the new gold investing book How to Invest in Gold and Silver, and website available at Invest Gold UK.

Hopefully it can become a forum for free and open Gold and Silver investing discussion.