Should I buy gold?

So, what do you do? Pull out your money and sit on it? Not a good way to make anything, but you will definately not lose it. Unless you are a very savvy investor, or know something the rest of us don't, you probably won't do very well in stocks right now. What I have found worked for me (I day trade stocks, but have not done well recently) is gold.

Gold is a great place to be right now. The cause of the market problems are bank troubles, high oil prices, and a weakening dollar. However, all these factors are indicators of rising gold value. When a market gets weak, people move to gold. Because it is a worldwide currency, the value of your base currency (i.e. the dollar) does not matter. The factors that cause other investment instruments to go bad, are the same factors that cause gold to do well. In the last 6 months, the Dow has been all over the place, and has pretty much erased the gains of the last two years of boming markets. In the same 6 months, the price of an ounce of gold has gone from the $620 range to the $950 range. So while everyone in the market has been losing badly, gold has shown a %40 increase. I'll take the gold please.

Now, the biggest reason people are wary of gold is that it is a physical investment, meaing you don't just have a server at some bank saying you own x of something. When you buy gold, you get x ounces of actual gold. Then you have to transport it, store it safely, and so on. It is a real hassle. However, there are "stocks" caled ETFs, which actually reflect a certain percentage of a commodity, such as gold, silver or oil. That means you can own gold without having to actually deal with gold. When you purchase a share of a gold ETF, you are purchasing a part, say %10, of the current value of gold. The benefit is that the ETF broker deals with the phyical commodity, so you don't need to worry about anything.

So get out there and start getting your money back. Any investment organization, your bank, or online broker, can help you research and invest in an ETF. Reap the rewards of a bad market, and easily return to your normal strategies when everything returns to "normal".