One Way To Trade Gold Is To Do "spot Gold" Trades

By Davis Halsall


It is sometimes hard to explain the appeal of gold - something that goes beyond its beauty. Perhaps it is its inherent financial value. Savvy investors today are reaping the rewards of investing in gold, and have been for decades. The successful run over the last decade for it as an investment vehicle has been outstanding. That makes it an investment you can count on, even when, financially speaking, the world looks close to breaking point.

Gold is resistant to most elements, which therefore makes it a valuable and useful substance. It's true what they say about gold - if you look after it, there's no reason why it shouldn't last forever. Once gold was minted into coin form, certain countries benefited greatly from amassing and trading with gold.. The interesting thing about gold is that as our society progresses culturally and technologically we continue to find new and inventive uses for gold.

Most modern currencies are now no longer tied to gold and are therefore backed by nothing but a promise to pay by the issuing government. What a country's printed money is valued at by its trading partners can be reduced seriously in times of economic uncertainty. Gold almost always increases in value dramatically when this type of scenario exists. While the government can essentially print the value of your money away, gold retains its value or increases because you simply can't print more of it. In the absence of confidence in a country or currency, gold becomes the standard and stabilizing force.

What is it about gold that makes it so special? Like all precious metals, gold has a range of factors that make it both hard to use (it has a high melting point) and easy to use (it is very soft). Because of its brilliant colour, ancient people believed that gold must have come from the gods. Hence its widespread use in early religions. As time went on, and as people began bartering for goods and materials, gold and silver suddenly became useful as money. Ancient cultures used gold and silver as portable and private money - that is, in the form of "coins". People "recycled" gold through history, and we're no different today - at any one time today we recycle at least a 3rd of all the gold in the world.

Gold is no longer used by most countries to secure the currency, instead they issue fiat money which is nothing more than a promise to pay the holder a value equivalent to what's printed on the paper or coin. During the last century over a dozen fiat currencies have failed due to hyper-inflation and the respective government printing too much money that became worthless when trading partners refused to accept the promise and wanted more solid forms of payment. Even the mighty Roman Empire had its fiat currency fail during the height of its power. Each time a failure occurred, gold was used to shore up the finances of the country in question.




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