Precious Metal Investments – Gold, Silver, Platinum And Palladium

It should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody seasoned in the world of precious metal investments that we’ve been seeing some strong showings for all metals well into 2009.

This of course comes off of the boost we saw in the market throughout 2008 when, for a few brief moments, gold actually pierced the thousand-dollar barrier for the first time in years.

It should come as no surprise to anyone holding precious metal investments and it should come as no surprise to anyone who reads a newspaper now and then. As is usually the case, these boosts we’ve been seeing are largely thanks to high demand for gold, silver, platinum and palladium. That demand comes largely thanks to the recession.

It’s a bit unfortunate that it takes a recession for most investors to get into precious metal investments, but at least they’re getting into metals in the first place.

Of course, luckily, many of us were quick enough to notice the downward trends in the economy and jump into precious metal investments before the value of the dollar became a problem. Even luckier, many were already involved in metals well before the first signs of trouble.

While these rushes for metal in times of strife is, of course, a good thing, the point of precious metal investments really is that they serve as an insurance policy against times like these. Protecting yourself in any context is a good idea, but it’s generally better to be prepared than caught unawares.

While we are still smack dab in the middle of the most serious economic crisis in decades, the good news is that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Many are disappointed that Barack Obama did not, somehow, have a magical overnight solution for the economy, but as we’ve seen, the problems with the economy cannot be blamed entirely on this or that presidential administration, but rather, on trends, patterns and tendencies within the economy that have been going unchecked for years. So of course, new leadership offers no quick fix, however, the economy is at the top of the list of priorities for the current administration and we’ll have to wait and see what can be done about all this.

In the meantime, hold onto your precious metal investments through this and the next recession.

This won’t be the last financial crisis the US ever faces and it won’t even be the worst. It is simply the one we’re dealing with right now. The tendency is for people to believe that a recession is something of a freak occurrence, the sort of thing that only happens after a few very bad years. The fact is that this recession has been creeping up on us since the early nineties.

Even should the recession end tomorrow, that doesn’t mean we won’t have another situation like this one to deal with a decade, or even just a few years down the road. Hold onto your precious metal investments and be ready when that happens.