What's the best gold investment strategy for a Singapore resident?
With gold at US$1300 or so, a gram is about $40.  For your purposes, you have the choice between the GLD ETF, which represents a bit less than 1/10oz gold equivalent per share, or the physical metal itself. Either choice has a cost: the commission on the buy plus, eventually, the sale of the gold. There may be ongoing fees as well (fund fees, storage, etc.) GLD trades like a stock and you can enter limit orders or any other type of order the broker accepts.
I don't see any trading activity on rough rice options, so I'll just default to gold.  The initial margin on a gold futures contract is $5,940. An option on a gold futures represents 1 contract. The price of an October gold futures call with a strike of $1310 is currently $22.70. Gold spot is currently $1308.20. The October gold futures price is $1307.40. So, yeah, you can buy 1 option to later control 1 futures for $22.70, but the moment you exercise you must have $5,940 in a margin account to actually use the futures contract. You could also sell the option. I don't know how much you're going to enjoy trading options on futures though -- the price of this option just last week ranged from $13.90 to $26, and last month it ranged from $15.40 to $46.90. There's some crazy leverage involved. Very interesting. I would like to expand beyond just precious metals and stocks, but I am not ready just to jump in just yet (I am a relatively young investor, but have been playing around with stocks for 4 years on and off). The problem I often find is that the stock market is often too overvalued to play Ben Graham type strategy/ PE/B, so I would like to expand my knowledge of investing so I can invest in any market and still find value. After reading Jim Rogers, I was really interested in commodities as an alternative to stocks, but I like to play really conservative (generally). Thank you for your insight. If you don't mind, I would like to add you as a friend, since you seem quite above average in the strategy department. "Since you are going to be experiencing a liquidity crisis that even owning physical gold wouldn't solve, may I suggest bitcoins? You will still be liquid and people anywhere will be able to trade it. This is different from precious metals, whereas even if you ""invested"" in gold you would waste considerable resources on storage, security and actually making it divisible for trade. You would be illiquid. Do note that the bitcoin currency is currently more volatile than a Greek government bond." if you bought gold in late '79, it would have taken 30 years to break even. Of all this time it was two brief periods the returns were great, but long term, not so much. Look at the ETF GLD if you wish to buy gold, and avoid most of the buy/sell spread issues.  Edit - I suggest looking at Compound Annual Growth Rate and decide whether long term gold actually makes sense for you as an investor. It's sold with the same enthusiasm as snake oil was in the 1800's, and the suggestion that it's a storehouse of value seems nonsensical to me. Are you going to South Africa or from?  (Looking on your profile for this info.) If you're going to South Africa, you could do worse than to buy five or six one-ounce krugerrands.  Maybe wait until next year to buy a few; you may get a slightly better deal. Not only is it gold, it's minted by that country, so it's easier to liquidate should you need to.  Plus, they go for a smaller premium in the US than some other forms of gold. As for the rest of the $100k, I don't know ... either park it in CD ladders or put it in something that benefits if the economy gets worse. (Cheery, ain't I? ;) ) Gold's valuation is so stratospheric right now that I wonder if negative numbers (as in, you should short it) are acceptable in the short run.  In the long run I'd say the answer is zero.  The problem with gold is that its only major fundamental value is for making jewelry and the vast majority is just being hoarded in ways that can only be justified by the Greater Fool Theory.  In the long run gold shouldn't return more than inflation because a pile of gold creates no new wealth like the capital that stocks are a claim on and doesn't allow others to create new wealth like money lent via bonds.  It's also not an important and increasingly scarce resource for wealth creation in the global economy like oil and other more useful commodities are. I've halfway-thought about taking a short position in gold, though I haven't taken any position, short or long, in gold for the following reasons: Straight up short-selling of a gold ETF is too risky for me, given its potential for unlimited losses. Some other short strategy like an inverse ETF or put options is also risky, though less so, and ties up a lot of capital.  While I strongly believe such an investment would be profitable, I think the things that will likely rise when the flight-to-safety is over and gold comes back to Earth (mainly stocks, especially in the more beaten-down sectors of the economy) will be equally profitable with less risk than taking one of these positions in gold. "Setting a certain % of income for pension actually depends on person.  ""Always pay yourself first"" This is the quote which I love the most and which I am currently following.  If you are planning to do 8%, then why don't you stretch a little bit more to 10%. I suggest you to do monthly review. If you can stretch more, increase % a little more by challenging yourself. This is rewarding. For pension plan, there is SRS Supplementary Retirement Plan where foreigners can also set aside of their money. This is long term plan and you can enjoy tax relief too. The catch is you can only withdraw the money when you reach certain age. Otherwise, you have to pay tax again (certain %) once you decide to withdraw. Serveral banks in Singapore offers to open this account. I suggest to compare pro and cons. If you are planning to work in Singapore for quite long, you may wish to consider this. Useful links http://www.mof.gov.sg/MOF-For/Individuals/Supplementary-Retirement-Scheme-SRS https://blog.moneysmart.sg/budgeting/is-the-supplementary-retirement-scheme-a-waste-of-your-time-and-money/" You can make a start to learn how to make better investing decisions by learning and understanding what your current super funds are invested in. Does the super fund give you choices of where you can invest your funds, and how often does it allow you to change your investment choices each year? If you are interested in one area of investing over others, eg property or shares, then you should learn more on this subject, as you can also start investing outside of superannuation. Your funds in superannuation are taxed less but you are unable to touch them for another 30 to 35 years. You also need to consider investing outside super to help meet your more medium term goals and grow your wealth outside of super as well. If you are interested in shares then I believe you should learn about both fundamental and technical analysis, they can help you to make wiser decisions about what to invest in and when to invest.  Above is a chart of the ASX200 over the last 20 years until January 2015. It shows the Rate Of Change (ROC) indicator below the chart. This can be used to make medium to long term decisions in the stock market by investing when the ROC is above zero and getting out of the market when the ROC is below zero. Regarding your aggressiveness in your investments, most would say that yes because you are still young you should be aggressive because you have time on your side, so if there is a downturn in your investments then you still have plenty of time for them to recover. I have a different view, and I will use the stock market as an example. Refer back to the chart above, I would be more aggressive when the ROC is above zero and less aggressive when the ROC is below zero. How can you relate this to your super fund? If it does provide you to change your investment choices, then I would be invested in more aggressive investments like shares when the ROC crosses above zero, and then when the ROC moves below zero take a less aggressive approach by moving your investments in the super fund to a more balanced or capital guaranteed strategy where less of your funds are invested in shares and more are invested in bonds and cash. You can also have a similar approach with property. Learn about the property cycles (remember super funds usually invest in commercial and industrial property rather than houses, so you would need to learn about the commercial and industrial property cycles which would be different to the residential property cycle). Regarding your question about SMSFs, if you can increase your knowledge and skills in investing, then yes switching to a SMSF will give you more control and possibly better returns. However, I would avoid switching your funds to a SMSF right now. Two reasons, firstly you would want to increase your knowledge as mentioned above, and secondly you would want to have at least $300,000 in funds before switching to a SMSF or else the setup and compliance costs would be too high as a percentage of your funds at the moment ($70,000). You do have time on your side, so whilst you are increasing your funds you can use that time to educate yourself in your areas of interest. And remember a SMSF is not only an investment vehicle whilst you are building your funds during your working life, but it is also an investment vehicle when you are retired and it becomes totally tax free during this phase, where any investment returns are tax free and any income you take out is also tax free. "Buying physical gold: bad idea; you take on liquidity risk.  Putting all your money in a German bank account: bad idea; you still do not escape Euro risk.  Putting all your money in USD: bad idea; we have terrible, terrible fiscal problems here at home and they're invisible right now because we're in an election year.  The only artificially ""cheap"" thing that is well-managed in your part of the world is the Swiss Franc (CHF).  They push it down artificially, but no government has the power to fight a market forever.  They'll eventually run out of options and have to let the CHF rise in value." One option is buying physical gold.  I don't know about Irish law -- but from an economic standpoint, putting funds in foreign currencies would also be an option. You could look into buying shares in an ETF tracking foreign currency as an alternative to direct money exchange. My personal gold/metals target is 5.0% of my retirement portfolio. Right now I'm underweight because of the run up in gold/metals prices. (I haven't been selling, but as I add to retirement accounts, I haven't been buying gold so it is going below the 5% mark.) I arrived at this number after reading a lot of different sample portfolio allocations, and some books. Some people recommend what I consider crazy allocations: 25-50% in gold. From what I could figure out in terms of modern portfolio theory, holding some metal reduces your overall risk because it generally has a low correlation to equity markets. The problem with gold is that it is a lousy investment. It doesn't produce any income, and only has costs (storage, insurance, commissions to buy/sell, management of ETF if that's what you're using, etc). The only thing going for it is that it can be a hedge during tough times. In this case, when you rebalance, your gold will be high, you'll sell it, and buy the stocks that are down. (In theory -- assuming you stick to disciplined rebalancing.) So for me, 5% seemed to be enough to shave off a little overall risk without wasting too much expense on a hedge. (I don't go over this, and like I said, now I'm underweighted.) I think your question is very difficult to answer because it involves speculation. I think the best article describing why or why not to invest in gold in a recent Motley Fool Article. Putting the money in a bank savings account is a reasonably safe investment. Anything other than that will come with additional risk of various kinds. (That's right; not even a bank account is completely free of risk. Neither is withdrawing cash and storing it somewhere yourself.) And I don't know which country you are from, but you will certainly have access to your country's government bonds and the likes. You may also have access to mutual funds which invest in other countries' government bonds (bond or money-market funds). The question you need to ask yourself really is twofold. One, for how long do you intend to keep the money invested? (Shorter term investing should involve lower risk.) Two, what amount of risk (specifically, price volatility) are you willing to accept? The answers to those questions will determine which asset class(es) are appropriate in your particular case. Beyond that, you need to make a personal call: which asset class(es) do you believe are likely to do better or less bad than others? Low risk usually comes at the price of a lower return. Higher return usually involves taking more risk (specifically price volatility in the investment vehicle) but more risk does not necessarily guarantee a higher return - you may also lose a large fraction of or even the entire capital amount. In extreme cases (leveraged investments) you might even lose more than the capital amount. Gold may be a component of a well-diversified portfolio but I certainly would not recommend putting all of one's money in it. (The same goes for any asset class; a portfolio composed exclusively of stocks is no more well-diversified than a portfolio composed exclusively of precious metals, or government bonds.) For some specifics about investing in precious metals, you may want to see Pros & cons of investing in gold vs. platinum?. Diversification is an important aspect of precious metals investing.  Therefore I would suggest diversifying in a number of different ways: Gold and silver are for after the crisis, not during.  Gold and silver are far more likely to be able to be exchanged for things you need, since they are rare, easily divided, etc. Getting land away from where the crap is happening is also good, but it's more than that.  Say you have land somewhere.  How will the locals view you if you move there to hunker down only when things go bad?  They won't really trust you, and you'll inherit a new set of problems.  Building relationships in an off-the-beaten-path area requires a time investment. Investing in lifestyle in general is good.  Lifestyle isn't just toys, but it's privacy, peace of mind, relationships with people with whom you can barter skills, as well as the skills you might think you'd need to do more than just get by in whatever scenario you envision. For the immediate crisis, you'd better have the things you'll need for a few months.  Stores probably won't be supplied on any regular basis, and the shelves will be bare.  Trying to use gold or silver during the crisis just makes you a target for theft.  With regard to food, it's best to get acclimated to a diet of what you'd have on hand.  If you get freeze-dried food, eat it now, so that it's not a shock to your system when you have to eat it. (Can you tell I've been thinking about this? :) )