What is paper gold? When investors talk about paper gold, they’re not referring to a gold leaf, which is real gold hammered into a thin, paper-like sheet that’s used in gilding, stretching gold out for decoration in jewelry, architecture, book-making, and mosaics. They’re talking about gold contracts and derivatives that have been created to make gold trading more mainstream, faster, and profitable for traders who want to go short instead of long.
Paper Gold vs. Gold Bullion :
What’s the difference between paper gold and real gold bullion? Paper gold is a contract for the future delivery of gold. However, most people who trade in paper gold don’t ever actually want to receive gold bullion. Not only are the contracts rarely ever delivered upon, but there’s also a lot of speculation that they never could be delivered on. That’s because there’s more paper gold out there than real gold bullion. The situation is even more pronounced with silver.
Paper gold exists so that gold traders can profit from gold prices going down. When they “go short” on gold, they essentially rent a gold stock from someone who already owns it, sells it at the price of gold today, then buy another gold stock and return it. If the price of gold has gone down, they’ve made a tidy profit. Many believe that the paper gold market is artificially keeping gold prices down, both by inflating the real quantity of gold that can be traded and allowing this type of short-selling.
Is Gold Bullion Better?
It depends on what kind of investor you are, but if you’re looking into gold because you are risk-averse and you need a conservative asset, yes, gold is better. While many criticize the expense of keeping gold, saying insurance and storage are expensive. But there are also management fees involved in a gold ETF. Plus, you face the counter-party risk of trusting your investment with a fund. When you buy gold bullion from a dealer like Silver Gold Bull, you’re putting your trust in the value of gold. When you buy into a gold ETF, you’re putting your trust in the fund’s management as much as anything.
As any investor knows, there’s never such thing as a guaranteed gain. But real gold bullion is about as close to it as you can get. Since modern gold trading began, it’s kept up with inflation in the long term (and done much better than either currency or equities over certain periods). For centuries before then, gold was the preferred way to store wealth. Physical gold bullion is one of the most durable materials on the planet. Thanks to safe and insured online gold buying from online gold companies like Silver Gold Bull, it’s never been safer to save on gold by going online. The risks of holding gold bullion are far lower than paper gold or gold mining stocks in the end. Trust your money in real gold bullion, not paper gold.
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