Originally Posted by Tarbe
Originally Posted by Cheyenne
Now, if you put that same $100 into the S&P 500 index funds on January 1, 1971 and reinvested the dividends back into the S&P 500 index funds, you would have had $20,584.12 as of December 31, 2023. Source:
https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1971 And the S&P 500 is up about 10% from January 1, 2024 to present, so you can add $2,000 to that number. The index has beat inflation by an average of 6.48% per year per the cited source.


Originally Posted by Tarbe
Physical ownership of metal carries no counterparty risk.
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Gold has the risk that people aren't going want it any more than dollars if the meltdown predicted by the doom and gloomers comes true. The true gold believers also appear to be operating under the beliefs that they would be masters of the universe in such a scenario and that the government and the 99.9% of the population that doesn't hold such assets are going to sit by and let that happen.

Plenty of people have speculated in stocks, even the "good" stocks, and lost money. If the million I lost in oilfield stocks 10 years ago had been parked in Gold (with no fees or taxes eating away at it).....

And how many times in history has the world turned its collective back on Gold? What are central banks hoarding right now, at record levels, around the world?

Right....Gold.

While I wouldn't know enough to address your particular situation, and hindsight is 20/20 for both of us, a relatively conservative strategy of broad based index funds and ETFs has historically been very lucrative compared to gold so long as one maintained enough liquidity to continue to hold during a downturn. That is investing, not speculation. My hindsight is that I lost opportunities by buying into the doom and gloom approach for longer than I should have. Fortunately, I figured it out before it was too late.

"Don't believe everything you see on the Internet" - Abraham Lincoln