Gold

[Dioltach]

An interesting article on the BBC site about why gold was the most widely used material for currency.

 

[jonesy]

So basically gold is the best because it's boring (in the chemical sense).

 

[tuxgeo]

So basically gold is the best because it's boring (in the chemical sense).

That is one reason; another is that gold is relatively scarce.
(If it were plentiful, its economic value would be lower.)

A companion metal is silver, which is also considered to be a "precious metal," as gold is.
However, silver reacts more; but it has even better electrical conductivity.

Attention market theorists: Has silver made a bottom recently? The price of gold per ounce had historically been approximately 17 times the price of silver per ounce, but lately it has been much higher than that. (In the neighborhood of 50x instead of 17x.)

Anybody have insights on this? (Are ticker symbols 'AG' and 'SVM' going to rise in coming weeks?) (Are all the crystal balls cloudy today?)

 

[Kramodlog]

Or gold is overvalued and will steadily go down for the up coming years.

 

[trappedslider]

That is one reason; another is that gold is relatively scarce.
(If it were plentiful, its economic value would be lower.)

A companion metal is silver, which is also considered to be a "precious metal," as gold is.
However, silver reacts more; but it has even better electrical conductivity.

Attention market theorists: Has silver made a bottom recently? The price of gold per ounce had historically been approximately 17 times the price of silver per ounce, but lately it has been much higher than that. (In the neighborhood of 50x instead of 17x.)

Anybody have insights on this? (Are ticker symbols 'AG' and 'SVM' going to rise in coming weeks?) (Are all the crystal balls cloudy today?)

What happened to silver was that one of the Gulf countries who had a large amount of silver dumped it into the market which drove prices down..but this was years ago I do believe.

 

[Janx]

Or gold is overvalued and will steadily go down for the up coming years.

That seems probable. I've seen a lot of commerrcials about buying gold (or selling your gold) over the last few years. Somebody's making money off of that.

Plus, there was that one guy on that news station, who was promoting dire times and buying gold, and then doing commercials for buying gold. As I recall, he finally got fired and is just doing radio now.

 

[Kramodlog]

At a time it made sense to buy gold if you wanted to speculate on its value, but not now, unless you really are aiming for the very long term.

 

[Zombie_Babies]

At a time it made sense to buy gold if you wanted to speculate on its value, but not now, unless you really are aiming for the very long term.

And have a lot of money to tie up for a long time, too.