For obvious reasons, physical precious metals like gold bars or silver coins are considered a long-term investment strategy by most investors. Just imagine moving your bullion with each change in the market….at a moment’s notice. No thank you!
Sidenote: Our revolutionary online trading platform Elemetal Vault (which you should definitely check out if you haven’t already), allows precious metals bugs to buy AND sell allocated physical gold and silver instantly—just like stocks.
Because investing in physical precious metals is often a long-term play, and you LOVE to invest in precious metals, it makes sense to not only think like a long-term investor, but also speak like one.
A recent Motley Fool article lists 4 things you should avoid saying as a long-term investor:
- “Tightening into a cup-and-handle” (and other technical-trading jargon). Short-term trading involves lots and lots of technical jargon that people invent to explain daily stock movements. Learning all of the lingo requires much dedication, patience, skill and—for long-term investors—unnecessary time and effort.
- “I need to double my money in two months!” (Sigh). Not only is this a classic sign of speculation, but it shows an obvious lack of understanding about the reality of investing.
- “Oh, no! My stock is down today!” It can be difficult not to check how your investments are doing frequently, especially in the beginning. However, just do yourself a favor and stop obsessing, or else you might get spooked and “cash out” too early. Some of the best investors of all time (*cough Warren Buffett *cough) got where they did by sticking with good investments through bad times.
- “Here is what’s going to happen…” Anyone who says they know exactly where the market is headed is either lying or has a secret time machine. No one can predict the future, so don’t bother basing major investment decisions on someone who claims to have such a skill.
Those are some good ones, for sure. But we’d also like to add a few other phrases precious metal investors should never utter, including:
- “Gold only goes up when everything else goes down.” If you look at the long-term picture, gold tends to rise as stocks slide, making it a valuable safe haven asset. But a tendency does not mean a rule. Many factors can affect gold prices either way, regardless of how the market is angled.
- “Gold is better than silver or PGMs.” Gold may be the most recognized precious metal, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. In fact, the industrial values of silver, platinum and palladium are all greater than gold. Plus, the importance of diversifying your portfolio means you can’t afford to forget about the lesser-known precious metals.
- “I don’t need physical metal if I have ETFs.” Think again. Owning physical metal is the only way to guarantee that your wealth is backed by something real, not paper promises.
What other phrases do you think long-term investors should never say?
We want to hear your ideas in the comments below, or on our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages.
