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| The Allure of the Yellow Metal |
It was post marriage that I started to question the foundations of my beliefs regarding the ‘gold is for the greedy’ theory. When I got married in 2003, gold had become very expensive. I remember buying a piece of jewelry for my wife and something told me that I might just regret buying that gold at such a high price. It’s not that I didn’t have the money. It was just a mental barrier. In the last few years I have seen my mom-in-law invest year after year in gold, only regretting that if she had some more money, she would have pumped all of it into gold too. When I have checked the price of gold every now and then, I have seen that it only seemed to have risen from the previous time. And it has been rising steadily each year since I got married and started tracking it. I pulled up global historical gold price movement charts which showed me gold price movements over the last 30 years. And they told a tale. They showed that while globally gold prices have certainly risen over the last 3 decades, there have been years when the prices got stagnated and even fell. However, in India, Gold prices have been broadly rising on a consistent basis over the last 3 decades. In recent times, I have started to feel that if ever there was a fool in investing, it was me. I missed the gold bus. What a shame!!
Well, there is always room to make a start. Finally, I decided to take the plunge into buying gold. But I had decided that I wouldn’t put the money into jewelry. Some quick research gave me the understanding that jewelry entails ‘making charges’ and other expenses that knock off some of the value. Furthermore, why keep a solid asset which can always get lost or pilfered? My dad gave me an idea that I could just buy gold coins but I was still against the idea of having anything tangible. I finally found the solution – GOLD ETFs (Exchange Traded Fund).
Last week, there was a global correction of Gold prices. In India, gold hit a 10 week low. Apparently, farmers who are the traditional buyers of gold, invest their money in this season to buy seeds and other farm sowing products. Hence, this is the traditional lean season for gold. I spotted this opportunity and purchased some Gold ETFs last week. I will be looking to take greater calls in the future when I get such opportunities. Gold after all is not just for the greedy
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