Best options for the impending recession? (1 Viewer)

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as for your original question...the goverment thinks the best option is to give everyone but me $600, charge me Alternative Minimum tax and watch me squirm because now I cannot afford to save/invest a large chunk of $$$ becasue it would not be readily availabe to me in the event of an emergency.


Precious metals abound. I know there are mutual funds that deal exclusively with precious metals
http://biz.yahoo.com/p/tops/sp.html
 
I wouldn't even know where to start. I see the ads on tv for etrade and have thought about getting on there and doing something. I have no clue what, but something.
 
Be careful with etrade and ameritrade accounts. Both of these places do a lot of lending and could be open for bank runs if a lot of people pulled money at once. I would suggest scottrade.

For those looking at getting into metals this is from another thread.
bclemms said:
I had someone PM me a couple weeks ago with nearly this exact question. Here was my reply.

There are a bunch of different ways to invest in gold. You can buy the gold and physically hold it. This is usually done by those that are wanting to hold gold for a long period to hedge inflation or in case of economic collapse. If you want to go this route there are plenty of places to buy from. The most popular is www.kitco.com but you can find it cheaper if you search around. You can even buy it by the gram or ounce on ebay.

If you are wanting to buy physical gold but do not want to actually hold it and want to have the ability to sell in an instant then there are gold holding companies online. You can buy x amount of gold for y dollars. They hold the gold but you can sell anytime you like for market value. There is a small fee involved for this. I am not sure the best company but you can do some research in the two links at the bottom of the message.

The most popular way people buy "gold" is with stocks. In this case you would not actually be buying gold, instead would be buying stock to companies that follow gold like mining companies. You can buy single stocks or you can buy mutual funds. The fund I was most invested in until recently is USAGX which is managed by USAA. Many of the mining companies are foreign owned and operated so buying them would just depend on the brokerage service you use. I use USAA and can buy just about any stock that is traded but many swear by scottrade or others like it. The mining companies make money by selling the gold that they pull out of the ground (obviously). If a company pulls out 100oz of gold a week and sell it for $800 per ounce then they are making $80,000 per week. If the price of gold jumps to $1000oz then their profit jumps to $100,000 per week and the stock goes up. The mining stocks don't follow gold perfectly but it is pretty darn close. When the price of gold goes up the mining stocks follow 99% of the time.

You can also lease or rent gold but I am not the person to talk to about that.

Buying and selling gold is considered very risky. Gold is near an all time high right now and if the bottom fell out you would lose money and lose it fast. It also moves quite a bit on a daily/weekly timeframe. So remember the risk is there and even if you diversify in the gold market it is still risky. In my opinion (which is mine, don't do anything because of what I say) gold is not that risky right now. The reason I don't think gold is that risky is because it tracks the dollar. The dollar has been on a steady decline for several years now but as long as the fed has to continue to cut rates to keep the stock market from tanking the dollar will continue to weaken. As long as we are in Iraq spending Trillions the government will continue to print money and hurting the dollar in the process. Until something drastic happens gold is a pretty safe bet not to lose your ***, which is not typical for gold historically. I'm not saying you can't lose money because you can, just the risk is less than normal.

Something to remember when buying and selling gold stocks. Gold is traded almost all day, year round on the global market. The price of gold could bottom out while you are sleeping and before you could sell the mining stocks would hit the floor so be careful, particularly over long weekends where gold might be traded for three days between the time you can place trades. Also remember that Fed rate cuts make the price of gold swing pretty dramatically. In late October to early November gold moved up $150/oz in just a couple weeks

Again, IMO, gold has a huge upside. If the market crashes and foreign countries do start selling the dollar in huge quantities gold will skyrocket overnight. The same thing if OPEC eventually decided to move away from the dollar. Those may not be likely to happen but if either or both did gold would truly be worth thousands of dollars an ounce. What is likely is that the dollar continues to slide against other currencies and inflation continues to grow. This will cause gold to go up. Again, these are just my thoughts. Do your own research if when you get ready to buy.

The best places to learn about different ways to buy and sell gold is a couple of forums. Keep in mind that a lot of these gold guys are extremely bullish and always optimistic so don't value opinions until you know whose opinion it is.



https://www.kitcomm.com/
http://goldismoney.info/forums/

Here is a live chart to track the price of gold.
http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

Here is a live chart to track the dollar (java, takes a minute to load):
http://www.fxstreet.com/rates-charts/currency-rates/
Click to expand...

The only thing I would add to this is stay away from paper gold or the places that give you certificates and hold your gold. A recent report came out that showed these places are required only to hold 25% of actual gold reserves on hand. If there was a run on gold then these places wouldn't be able to honor it.


I jumped out because gold has been tracking the stock market for the past week and it scared me. I still have my physical gold just sold the stocks. I think from here out I am just going to buy physical and store it.

Investing in PM's is not for the faint of heart, nor is investing in the current environment. So be sure you know what you are doing before buying anything.
 
Jeff Miller said:
We are a consumer drivin economy. It operates best when people are spending money buying goods.

............

Then taxes could then be shifted to something like a 1 % national sales tax.
Click to expand...

You completely missed that glaring and obvious logical inconsistency didn't you?
 
I've invested in butter.
 
efil4stnias said:
and I bought a "bunker buster" on the black market....so feed me now or else....
Click to expand...

And I just reported you to Homeland Security.

Man, this will get ugly quick.
 
bclemms said:
The only thing I would add to this is stay away from paper gold or the places that give you certificates and hold your gold. A recent report came out that showed these places are required only to hold 25% of actual gold reserves on hand. If there was a run on gold then these places wouldn't be able to honor it.
Click to expand...

I think this is where I am aiming. In the event of total meltdown, those papers would basically only be good for wiping after yourself.

I am checking prices for silver cause I can afford that for now. What about palladium?
 
I don't know much about palladium. From what I know it was a cheap metal with very few uses for a very long time. A few years back the auto industry started using it inside exhaust systems in cars because it doesn't corrode very easy and the price soared. I would think it is more along the lines of an industrial metal and would lose value during a hard recession because the demand on cars and trucks would go down. I really don't know much about it so don't take my word on it. I do know a few people got rich overnight by stockpiling it when it was a couple bucks an ounce.

There is a metal out there that is extremely cheap and as rare as platinum called tellurium. There really hasn't been a use for it so the price is very cheap. It is hard to find trustworthy sellers of Tellurium since there isn't much of a demand for it and not many people have a clue what it is. However, a couple solar panel researchers have been using the metal in some of the newer high tech solar panels and apparently it gives them a dramatic advantage over copper or other metals.

This may not sound interesting at first but if you look at what solar panel companies did in the stock market the last couple years you can see it certainly has a huge potential. If cars, houses, businesses, traffic lights, etc really make a move towards solar panels in the next decade look for Tellurium to go through the roof. The good thing is the stuff is so cheap it really wont go down in value but has a huge upside. There was also some talk about researchers using it in the exhaust system of diesel vehicles because it is so much cheaper than palladium. It is so rare that if any significant demand formed it would instantly shoot to the moon. So if you have a couple hundred bucks to gamble with the possibility of making a fortune is there. The only reason I haven't bought a few pounds is because I can't find anyone I trust to buy it from over the internet.
 
bclemms, thanks for explaining some of the metals investing to us noobs. Much appreciation. Looks like I've got a bit of research to do.


ps I wiki'd Tellurium and it does indeed appear to pwn. If you find a reputable source to buy from over the net, pm me.
 
Drink.
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>>You completely missed that glaring and obvious logical inconsistency didn't you?

Well 1% is insane. Most likely a consumption tax would be somewhere in the high teens or low 20's. :shrug:

TPS
 

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