When you are buying gold coins or bars with your own hard-earned cash, the ups and downs in gold prices can feel downright scary.
For professional investors and traders, it’s different. It isn’t their money they are spending, and they are used to seeing some volatility in prices.
As a gold owner, how can you best deal with volatility in gold prices?
First, don’t buy more gold than you can comfortably afford. You are buying gold as a long-term hedge against financial hardship. This is a long-term play. So you should never be spending your grocery money on buying gold.
Second, be realistic. All commodity prices rise and fall. There is no such thing as an investment without volatility.
Also, you may be pleased to know that gold is one of the least volatile of all precious metals or commodities when it comes to price.
Take a look at this chart.
There is gold, way off to the left. Metals like tin, palladium, platinum and copper have all displayed much higher levels of volatility over the last year.
The bottom line is that while gold prices do go up and down, the long-term trend has been consistently upward.
Keep your eyes on the future, and just ride through short-term volatility without worrying about it.
Remember, you are buying gold to own it, not to trade in it.