You shouldn't take either one's word and just act on it. Listen to both, see what they have to say, why they say it (what is their reasoning for it) and then make your own decision. Basically here Ray Dalio is saying that gold should be in the portfolio because it's safer than cash right now.
After reading How to Beat the Street", I love referring to a part of the book when he says you can put all of the top investors in the same room, and they won't agree on anything. I agree with you on taking it all in, educating yourself on the subject, then making an informed decision
JR, I am looking at GLD right now and I am seeing the 52 week high and low, as well as 2 year and 5 year. Gold is on the rise, but has already made a big jump over the last month. It's already up to its 52 week high, so is this still a good time to buy?
That's a good quote. And it's especially true with individual investors who manage their own portfolios as everyone has different needs and a different risk profile, so of course the decisions they make will be different.
Yes. I have my story elsewhere on the forum, but in a very quick nutshell, had pretty much of it, freaked out and sold when "the crash" started a number of years ago (no, not the crash of '29! hehe) and... don't wanna talk about that. Stupidest thing I ever did in my life and it will be a regret forever and ever. Sold at around $300 or so an ounce... and when I think of what it is now, I get physically ill. But that's not the end of it... a few years ago, we decided to get back into it. Ordered a lot of it... from Allen Stanford's company of all places, which was thought to be a great company at the time. Yeah, go ahead and slap me now. Stupid gold mistake number two. Many months of having basically nothing from that huge investment and thinking it was forever lost, receivership tangles, ugh!... the investors who bought gold there finally had their property unfrozen and released and all was well... uh... well, for everyone except Stanford, that is!
Well, I've been buying into these a little bit each week for many years. My educated guess is that they will go up considerably over time. A good longterm hedge against eventual inflation and possible hyperinflation, weak dollar, etc. Short to mid term, I like a little gold as alternative asset. I'm big on diversification as a hedge against possible trouble in the markets. Gold and treasuries are 2 places the herds often run to when things start to get ugly. I like to already be there with at least a few bucks beforehand. IAU is another good one that costs about 1/10th per share what GLD does.
Well I can certainly think of a few people that would be interested in something like this. I am not really one that buys into the whole gold thing, but I get it. I tend to think that currencies never really devolve unless something catastrophic happens, and I cannot see that being the case, so I do not think that it will have much value anytime soon in terms of spending value. I think it is more attractive as an investment.
I now have the idea that a little bit of gold is an essential part of one's portfolio because when things go bad among the other commodities, it is something to fall back on that can give an investor a positive outlook.
My fiance does this sort of thing. He goes online and buys cheap stocks of Gold and Silver and then holds on to them. He watches the price and when it's high enough for him, he goes to a local metal buyer and cashes in. I made fun of him at first, but when we did our first sell we made over 300 bucks profit ao I'm definitely not complaining. I personally don't do it, but he does and he enjoys it, plus it makes us some spare cash from time to time and we all know we can always use more cash!
The problem with "falling back" on gold is that the value of gold is just as volatile as everything else. In terms of long term investment the Dow outperforms gold every time (well, from 18000 to current day with the value of 1980 where they were even). These days gold is just basically a stock that happens to be a metal, in terms of how its value is determined. But if people thought about it that way they probably would't buy it because it would be a rather low performer.
