Based on everything I’ve read (including your article) I’m tempted to put it all in silver (...). Would you agree?
I do believe that holding a reasonable share of one's holdings in silver is a very good idea. What is even better is diversifying into both gold and silver - the more risk-averse you are the more gold relative to silver you should have. This is a secular bull market in the precious metals, so you should be fine in the long-term with this investment even if you use a very large part of your capital. When your physical 'insurance' holdings are taken care of and are worth 10-50% of your portfolio (depending on your risk preferences), you can think about growing your capital with precious metals stocks and with speculative transactions. Yes, I think that the best risk-to-reward ratio can be achieved by mixing long-term investment and speculation - reasoning can be found here. As a reminder, if you decide to use some capital to speculation then you probably could use a specialist's support and subscribing to our Premium Service or similar services should prove useful. If you wish to stick to long term investments only, you will not be able to reap greatest profits in this bull market, but you should still do very well in the long run. In this case I would still consider putting 25% in silver, 15% in gold and rest of the "tangible asset share" in various commodity stocks.
Why not all in silver? That's just for protection in case both of us could be wrong. 25% in silver should still be very profitable in the long run, but other parts of the portfolio are in my opinion poised to appreciate as well. Remember - this is your retirement money and you wouldn't want to panic if silver gets hammered one last time before blowing to the upside, which MAY happen. If it went very briefly 70% down, are you sure you would stick to your original strategy of holding it? With diversified portfolio, your maximum profit is somewhat limited, but the risk involved gets much lower and sticking to your original strategy at tough times gets more realistic (this is also why I prefer to mix strategies: speculation and investment). Besides - you will probably still come waaaay ahead of most of the people you know, as they will have no precious metals and/or exposure to commodities at all... Summing up, gold is good, silver is better, but when it comes to retirement money, I think diversification is the priority.
The same goes for the place you would hold your precious metals holdings. I would definitely keep some "buried in the backyard", perhaps some of it in the form of silver junk coins, in case of emergency you always have money that has any intrinsic value thanks to silver. I would also divide the rest between a couple of places. BullionVault seems to be the most attractive electronic form of precious metals, as many people in the business have confirmed the authentication of the system. Then there are Central Fund of Canada, and Bullion Management Services Inc. (http://www.bmsinc.ca/), both of which seem to be a good way to go. Bullion Management Services Inc. also includes some platinum in their fund, which is not bad, with diversification in mind. Perhaps you have a relative abroad? Perhaps keeping some silver over there would be a good idea.
I would not recommend other forms of electronic silver because of doubts regarding its existence. I would even prefer to hold silver at a bank (yes!) to most of the e-silver systems, as I think the probability of these systems defaulting is higher than the probability of silver being confiscated.
By the way, if you decided to purchase commodity stocks that are also listed on non-US exchanges, for example Canada or UK, you might consider purchasing them over there attractive, as those exchanges are governed by other jurisdictions.
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