What are Precious Metals?
Precious metals are the things that most people think about when investing – gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Most people want to invest in gold and silver because they think they know more about them, but platinum and palladium are also good metals to invest in.
Precious minerals are fun to think about investing in, but is now a good time to buy gold and silver, and other precious minerals? This article will attempt to answer that question, along with other questions you might have as a first-time investor.
The Metals
- Gold – Gold is the first mineral that people think about when they want to invest – and it is a good investment. Gold has been around much longer than most of the other metals on this list – as far back as Cleopatra and other pharaohs. In recent times, gold has been a hedge against inflation and because of this has been a good investment. The price of gold goes up when the economy is having issues and it lowers when the economy is doing better. Gold is always a good investment, in almost any form that you want to buy it. You can buy gold coins, gold bars and bullion, and gold jewelry, just to name a few.
- Silver – Silver has been around nearly as long as gold and some people think that it’s an even better investment than gold. It is less expensive and easier to buy than gold, and it lasts just as long. You might want to make silver one of your first precious minerals investments. You can buy silver the same ways that you can buy gold – coins, bars, bullion, and jewelry.
- Platinum – This is a little harder to get to than gold and silver, but it is still a good investment. There are many industrial uses for platinum, it is absolutely essential for the automotive industry. You can also use it to make jewelry because it has nearly the same shine as silver. The computer industry also uses it for many of the components in the processors. You can buy platinum jewelry, some coins, bars, and bullion. You can look here to learn more about platinum: https://www.britannica.com/science/platinum. This is an interesting mineral with many uses.
- Palladium – Another great investment, palladium is used for the electronics industry, dentistry, some jewelry, chemical applications, and medicine. Although this metal is especially useful for all these things, it is not as popular with investors as other metals.
How to Invest in Precious Metals
There are many ways to invest in precious metals, but they mostly fall into two groups: physical precious minerals and precious minerals investment products. Physical metals are the bars, coins, bullion, and jewelry that you can physically hold. They usually gain value as the underlying metal prices get higher. Precious metals investment products are things such as shares in mining companies, royalty companies, ETFs or exchange-traded funds, and futures contracts. With investment products, they gain value as the prices of the stocks go up.
The easiest way to invest in these metals, perhaps, is the stock market. Several companies focuses more on precious metal products. These companies are some of the biggest companies that deal in precious minerals. Some of those companies are listed below. You can look here to learn more about the New York Stock Exchange. There is some interesting information here.
- First Majestic Silver (NYSE: AG) – This is a gold and silver mining company and has the closest exposure to silver in the mining world.
- Franco-Nevada (NYSE: FNV) – This is a gold-focused streaming and royalty company. It also gets some of its money from silver, platinum, energy, and other mined materials.
- Newmont Mining (NYSE: NEM) – This is the fourth-largest silver mining company and the world’s biggest gold mining company. They also mine the basic metals such as copper, lead, and zinc.
- Sibanye-Stillwater (NYSE: SBSW) – They are the world’s largest producer of platinum and platinum products including palladium. They have an interest in metals that go into electric vehicle batteries.
- Wheaton Precious Metals (NYSE: WPM) – They are one of the world’s leaders in precious metals streaming and they generate their funds from cobalt, silver, gold, and palladium.
Precious Metals Investing Is not for Everyone.
Before you begin to invest in precious minerals, you want to determine why you want to. There are many reasons – as a hedge against inflation, to diversify your portfolio, to profit from the higher prices, or to store value. You then want to pick the metal that best fits your reasons for investing in it. You want to weigh the pros and cons of any of the minerals before you spend your money on them. You need to fully understand the idea of investing before you do any at all.
If you do not understand anything about investing, you can get a good financial advisor that can help you to learn. They can also help you to buy the metals or the stocks that you want, and if they cannot, they will point you in the right direction. You can do some research on the internet to find a good financial advisor – just make sure that they come from a reputable business or firm.
Conclusion
You can buy precious metals in many forms and use them for different types of investments. You can buy the metals outright, or you can buy stocks in the metals or metal companies. If you choose to buy the metals themselves, you can buy jewelry, bars, coins, or bullion for most of them. If you want to buy stocks, there are many ways that you can do that as well. You will need to make sure that you choose reputable businesses before you buy stocks or metals. You can check out the Better Business Bureau or your state’s attorney general’s office to make sure that you are choosing the right company. You will enjoy investing in these precious metals and it can be well worth your money.