I'm excited to have found out about gold. just lately it surpassed a psychological level of usd500/oz. and its said to be able to hit usd850 within 3 years. a more conservative figure is given by Merril Lynch at usd7xx (bfr gold surpassed usd500). Point is, gold is only going to go up. and people usually say if you are doing good with the stock market, you can expect 20% returns a year. starting at usd500 you will have usd864 by end of 3 years, but thats if you're so expert in so to sustain returns of 20% a year for the next 3 years in stocks and this kinda returns are only in aggresive stock markets like the usa.. malaysian stock market? uhhh bleak...

So you can either believe that you are a stock market expert that will turn 500 to 864. or you can just invest gold and start at 500 and mabye hit 850 and you dont have to do anything about it, just own it. some people questioned where the hell you going to store the gold, there are investment companies that will hold the gold for you. you dont have to actually have the gold in your hands and keep it at the bank or back home!

Of course the question is, why is gold going up? for one its been artificially priced for many years, even now its underpriced but of course how long it stays that way depends on how long the powers at be (the usa) can keep it up. Usa has been printing money for a long time and has been accumulating massive debts for a long time, which starts to make the USD become more and more unattractive to hold, which is why russia, middle east and asia are slowly converting some of their holdings into gold to protect agaisnt the cowboy dollar.

Being in the USA myself I can see many of the reasons why USA is in such deep shit and it can't go up anymore, its doesnt have to crash, but since it can't go up.. it can only go down, the stupid market fueled by false real estate economy which is fueled by debts which is bought up by china in return for exporting its goods etc, its just a BS cycle, the dollar is in a mess right now, and since malaysia is a dog to the dollar (maintaining a dirty float) its going to be tagged along to go down and suffer the inflation also.

the best defence agaisnt inflation? GOLD.

One thing gold is not meant to be a short term investment, the only times they help people make money is when a recession is coming, its expected for the dollar economy.

The only people who bother profiting in short term for gold are big funds because they actually make money and their buying fee is a lot less since they buy in billion amounts.

the price might dip a little below 500 when some other funds decide to take their profit.. it may be 497/oz and thats when you should buy. but if you buying like 1oz only then mabye this is not the best place for you to invest.

the price will dip below 500 and it will start rising again when other funds want a piece of the action.

gold... unless you have a lot of money to play, say in hundreds of thousands of ringgit, i think mabye not so feasible. also maybank is not the only place u can buy gold there are many other competitive gold companies u can buy from at much lower rates. the lowest i know is 2% but i'm sure the more u purchase u can haggle with them the rate.