Where to Invest in Gold

son of the gun, 5 minutes after I published this article, I found that Cardon Ding has just written almost exactly the same article in a FREE ebook, download here to view all great articles of this group writting project !

When an experience investor does not know what the future holds, he invests in gold.

The best way to invest in gold is to buy the purest form of physical gold as possible, namely the bullion bars or coins.  If given the option, bars are better than coins.  In principal the less art work the better.  The more art work on a bullion will usually comes with higher price spread.  Bullion price spread is usually 3% to 7%

The most common zzzz gold bullion in zzzz is the Kijang Emas Gold Bullion Coin.  I only know you can get them from Maybank, you can check current gold counter rate here and it can be purchased from selected Maybank branches nationwide

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UOB also offer saying that they have widest range of gold bullions and it seems they do provide narrower spread (2.6% onwards) in their price list.  You will need to call or email them for info.

There are also some retail sellers like   Poh Kong and PAMP but they don't guarantee buy back at market rate or they may buy back at 15-20% lower than market price.

Other sellers like myNetGold, Gold2Trade, R2Gold, SecureGold aren't really proper gold investment.  As of right now, I don't see them any better than a private company's shopping vouchers.  If you must deal with one, I myself may start looking at Public Gold, which has nothing to do with Public Bank.  Its just a tiny company in Penang.

However, those un-real gold sellers can be a good medium to 'speculate' gold price.  If that is your main goal then you may also open a gold investment account with Public Bank or Maybank.

Generally if you cann't afford even one ounce of gold bullion (MYR 3,000), then you should forget about gold investment.  But you still can speculate them using virtual accounts as mentioned above.  

The heavier bullion bar you buy, the smaller the price spread it is.  There is a saying that for about MYR 100,000 the spread can be as small as 1%+ which makes it extremely attractive over a shorter term accumulation says 1-3 years of fighting inflation during economy down turn.

Is your Finance all about money ?

Sorry for the silence, it seems that I may get tight up for a while recently.  You may have already observed that I no longer have time to find cartoon for my articles :)  I started writting for other publication so I get a bit confused and find it hard to balance the content between this blog and the other responsibility during this transition.  But there are so many more drafts to be released in this blog.  Bad Debt topics have a lot of hanky panky so I need to spend more time before proper release for public reading.  So I hope you guys do enjoy reading and do comment more so that I have better clues what articles to put up during the limited time I have now.

I have shared Gabriel's story, a 68 years old who used to be typical middle income group who sort of make it in his finance planning.  His neighbours don't even know him by name, his ex-colleges don't even remember him when they met on the street, his clients don't remember using his services, but yet he makes it better than many others who are holding high positions in careers, running a much more bigger scale business than him.

But his case doesn't come easy as a matter of fact.  It wasn't easy for him to save money in banks actually.  That were wars all around and everyone kept all their stuff under their own pillow - the safest place to be at that time.  There was only one choice when he invested in mutual fund and even newspaper warn people to be careful because the private mutual fund was ran by someone without linkage to bumiputera.  It was considered as the biggest scam at that time.

Gabriel first kid went to local university.  Gabriel taught well to his kids on finance matters.  Well actually no, he just taught his kids on income matters.  His first kid worked part time since high school and earned half of the expenses during his degree years.  

When the 2nd kid started to hint wanting to get foreign education, Gabriel made an interesting move.  He migrated to Australia.  It costed him MYR 3,000 at that time.  ( It costs more than MYR 10,000 now without a consultant ).  He didn't really like it there but it wasn't a decision for him anyway.  Eventually both of his 2nd and 3rd kids graduated with Australia degrees.  Costed him less than his first kid's degree.  

To him, this migration was the biggest sacrifies he made for his legacy, you can observe his business income was negative during that time, the only year his business runs a lost whole his life.  Because he thinks helping his whole family settling down in Australia was more important.  But this move also brought him some surprising result, that he actually retired earlier than he thought would be.

There are quite a few more interesting stories about Gabriel, but most of them are based on the same principal. 

When you need to achieve something in your finance matter and get stuck with the numbers ie. not enough money.  Try to elevate a little bit and ask yourself, what was it you are trying to achieve again ?  Most often one is pursuing the figures or money too hard that they forgot what the real purpose was.  

When you focus on the real purpose and not the money itself, you may suddenly realize money is not the only way to achieve your purpose.  And sometimes, you may find certain ways to achieve your purpose without money at all.

If the whole purpose of your personal finance is all about money, then you do not need personal finance planning actually.  What you need is to dedicate your whole life to making income.  Perhaps bank teller would be a good start.

So, is your finance all about money now ?

( part 1, part 2 ,part 3)

1view 09 04 02

I have been away mostly today and I have to admit although I do expect bullish but I didn't expect it this strong. Today's market performance is the first time shacking my confidence that market will drop to much worse during mid year.

The drop of gold price actually confirm stock up trend so although it will eventually come down but the up trend will last at least some more days.

I may profit take some of my speculative stocks tomorrow or early next week, keep my long stocks and continue to accumulate more bullets for later this year.

I get all these from stock.malpf.com, you may view there in real time too.