Investing in gold and silver has a sense of security: they are real. ‘Silver’ and ‘gold’ aren’t just names for companies, they are tangible objects that you can hold and feel the value of. Therein lies their power.
Investing in companies is a whole different story. With ‘normal’ stock investments, your money isn’t in something real. It’s just a number, an idea: insecure. Numbers on your computer screen, money invested into nothing solid. Ideas to be played around with.
But when investing into gold and silver, your money is in something solid. Real objects, precious metals: here your money isn’t an idea. The concept is very different: instead of putting your money into a company – an idea – you’re buying gold and silver with your money – something real.
Gold and silver cannot be ‘made’, as opposed to company products. This simplifies the supply and demand way of thinking, because there is a fixed supply. All that you have to worry about is the demand, and when isn’t the demand for precious metals high?
Apart from the high use of gold in jewellery, gold is also used in dentistry, (for gold crowns) embroidery, (to make threads with), electronics, (in connectors on wires) and as a coating on satellites and astronauts’ helmets.
Silver is used even more, in cutlery and mirrors, in medicine and as a food additive, and even to make polymers in clothes.
So if you’re considering investing money, take a look at gold and silver before you open the stock exchange and stare dully at different companies’ stocks.