Why buy at a MARKET HIGH?
Consider diamonds and prescious gems. It's portable and goes UP in value and not sold as such an inflated price as is gold, right now.
Gold is good. They said the same thing when Gold hit $800. It’s almost doubled since then. And it will keep on going up and probably level off at around $2,000.
Diamonds are not a great investment. Russia and De Beers stockpile them and keep their price artificially high. If for some reason, they decided to sell them off, the price of diamonds would crash...
Diamonds are a horrible investment. The price is totally subjective based on intangables like color and clarity. The markup from wholesale to retail is huge, meaning if you try to sell, no jewler will give you anything close to what you paid, so you will have to find a private buyer, and the price will go down in hard times. Finally, DuBeers and other producers have huge reserves and could flood the market at any time. The only reason that the price fo diamonds is high is that litterally tons of them are held back. Precious metals are not manipulated in that way, and the markup from wholesale to retail is a few percent.
No, no!!! Gems are for pleasure and to wear, they're not investment vehicles. How do I know? I'm a gem merchant.
Yes, gems fluctuate in price and people "in the know" can make money on them. But they're not fungible market commodities with established trading venues. Unless you're an expert in the gem business with a lot of knowledge and can buy at source levels, you'll have no idea what you're buying or of how to sell when the time comes. There's a good chance you'll be buying at retail and trying to sell at wholesale.
Third party laboratory reports on diamonds are ultimately subjective and are often faked. While most dealers in my business are honest there many gem investment scams that take advantage of consumer ignorance. They usually work out of phone banks in boiler rooms from across international borders.
Think of precious metal "investment" as a hedge against dollar inflation. It preserves the dollar's buying power while the Fed dilutes it by creating more and more dollars out of thin air. Inflation's a time honored method used by governments to devalue people's savings and pay off debts with printing press money. But metals markets can be as unpredictable as rattlesnakes on crack. Big players can move markets overnight and little guys can get badly hurt. At least that's my experience.