Even if you’re only a casual observer of financial markets, you must have noticed gold has had some pretty distinguished company during its most recent rally. Most of the market attention has gone to oil, which jumped above forty dollars per barrel after the Fed announced its softened plan for rate increases for the remainder of the year.

Commodities in general are raring for a climb since the dollar’s started to decline. But we’re starting to see significant action in two of gold’s sister metals, silver and platinum. They’re both exhibiting spillover energy from gold, as seasoned investors turn to them on the heels of a breakout in the yellow metal.

One of the signs market analysts look for in a stock or a commodity is resistance – a technical term that simply means a temporary price ceiling beyond which investors are reluctant to buy. It’s a bullish sign when a stock or a commodity pushes past and then sustains a price level above its resistance.

On Thursday silver shot up thirty cents to take out its intra-day sixteen dollar resistance, and then backed off twelve cents for a market close of fifteen-dollars and ninety-three cents.  Its current trend signifies the gray metal is now like a coiled spring.

Platinum, the “rich man’s gold,” has moved up eight percent since the beginning of the year. Thursday it closed at a spot price of nine hundred and eighty-six dollars. Traditionally the white metal has traded at a premium to gold because it’s much rarer and because it’s an industrial metal. Platinum is used as an anti-pollutant agent in the catalytic converters of automobiles.

But the price of platinum had actually slipped below gold to a price of $774 in 2008 because of production difficulties and reduced global demand for automobiles. Its current price at almost a thousand dollars per ounce most certainly reflects a positive outlook for the auto industry.  It’s also a sign that platinum is once more riding the coattails of gold.

Silver and platinum then present lucrative opportunities for investors who like precious metals and are looking to diversify. Of the two, I personally prefer silver.  While platinum looks promising this year, it has more work to do to reclaim its throne. Before its price had slipped in 2008, platinum was trading at over twenty-two hundred dollars per ounce.

Silver, on the other hand, has a much broader range of industrial uses than platinum.  It’s used in photography, medicine, batteries, bearings, electronics (including both computers and smart phones!), radiography, solar panels and many other applications.

I like silver coins too because they’re minted in smaller denominations than gold coins.  It’s easier to use them as cash in a monetary emergency to purchase everyday necessities like groceries and gas, while gold secures the bulk of your wealth.

Ideally, it makes sense for you to hold both silver and gold. Both are time-honored tangible assets. Gold is the ultimate protection against failing paper currency.  And, in a gold bull market, silver performs like gold with a bit of a kicker.

Now is the time to place a portion of your retirement money or savings into gold. Gold shines its brightest in times of economic uncertainty and collapse. Click here to download your free Gold IRA information package to learn how you can roll over part of your retirement account to gold and silver.

Gold Investment is the alternative currency that can safeguard you from these types of events. Putting a portion of your savings into this precious metal will help protect you. Download your free self directed IRA rollover gold IRA information kit today.

Sometimes the markets tee up some pretty easy trades. Investing is subject to trends and fashions, just like the clothing industry. The hot sector today will fall out of the headlines tomorrow. That’s why it’s good to keep part of your wealth in cash or liquid assets, so when those opportunities come by you can capitalize. For people who don’t day trade, don’t deal in options or play the market on margin, the market routinely presents very attractive sectors for long term buys. If you wait until the fundamentals get so out of whack that it makes the financial news, the train has already left the station.

The easy play right now is gold. Just wait, in another six weeks financial news channels will be raving about gold like they just discovered fire. This opportunity is easy to spot because the factors influencing the gold prices have nothing to do with the fundamentals of the metal itself. All of the factors pushing gold around today are external.

The Dollar

Of all the things in the world that can influence gold prices, the relative strength of the dollar compared to other world currencies by far has the biggest influence on the price of gold. That is also true for silver and almost every other commodity traded on open markets and sourced from more than one supplier. That’s because commodity trades are denominated in dollars. Consequently, when the dollar gains strength on world markets, commodity prices move lower to compensate. When the dollar goes on a run against other currencies, that means your dollar buys more gold. The relationship between the dollar and gold is not always exact, because the price of gold is influenced by many factors, but it tends to hold true over a long period of time.

The Fed

The dollar’s also being pushed higher by the U.S. Federal Reserve going it alone among world banks in its dogged (though still theoretical) resolve to raise interest rates. That determination to hike rates is creating the opportunity to purchase gold at a discount. Our currency policy is still the same disastrous accommodative, near-zero interest it’s been for the last seven years. In that time, despite all the talk, the Fed has raised interest rates exactly one time, for a measly quarter-point increase. They’re talking about, maybe, raising it another quarter-point in December. Considering the volume of cash that flows through the U.S. banking system, a quarter-point is barely a rounding error. The reason such a small potential increase is having such a large impact on the markets is because the rest of the world is doing all they can to dilute the value of their currencies. We’re not really doing all that great in terms of currency policy, just better than everyone else.

Steady Physical Demand

Sales of gold coins at the U.S. Mint continue to run at near record levels. This is also the time of year when gold sales in India surge due to the festival season. Physical demand for gold remains high in China as both China and India vie to be the top consumers of the precious metal.

Global Unease

There just isn’t anywhere you can look in the global economy and make a case that there’s growth. Continued weakness in the Chinese economy, the seemingly endless conflict in Syria, and the uncertainty generated by the Brexit vote and Deutsche Bank means the global economy is not going to ride to the rescue.  Thus gold will continue to provide a safe hiding place for edgy investors’ cash.

Unique Circumstances

Continued strong demand both domestically and overseas, combined with a sudden, and one could argue undeserved, surge in the dollar, we’re now looking at one of those rare moments when markets offer up buying opportunities. As long as demand remains high, the rate of growth in gold prices should remain steadily upward. Continued weakness in global markets, the demand for physical gold and the overreaction to the Fed hiking interest rates are all positive for gold prices going forward.

You can protect yourself against economic fallout from the situations like the Italian referendum. Now is the time to place a portion of your retirement money or savings into gold. Gold shines its brightest in times of economic uncertainty and collapse. Click here to download your free Gold IRA information package to learn how you can roll over part of your retirement account to gold and silver.

Gold Investment is the alternative currency that can safeguard you from these types of events. Putting a portion of your savings into this precious metal will help protect you. Download your free self directed IRA rollover gold IRA information kit today.

Between credit cards, debit cards, electronic payments, and more, virtual currency is taking over. But even so, good old fashioned cash will always be accepted for anything and everything, right? Well, not always. We may be irrevocably moving towards a cashless society. But what does that means for all of us?

Cash Not Accepted

Sweden’s economy relies almost entirely on credit cards or mobile phone payments. Physical cash makes up a mere 2% of all payments made in the country, and around 20% of transactions in brick and mortar retail establishments. An increasing number of Swedish citizens never carry cash anymore, since it’s simply not needed.

In fact most retail stores don’t even want cash. They’re legally allowed to refuse notes and coins if they want to, and an increasing number do. Most vending machines also only take credit cards, as do a lot of street vendors, and even some churches and banks.

The U.S. isn’t quite at that level yet, but we’re getting there. There are some establishments that won’t take it anymore. Instead, the new trend is towards mobile payment apps. Starbucks has its own mobile wallet, which allows you to pay for your coffee on your phone, and around 20% of Starbucks transactions employ it. Other retail stores are introducing their own apps.  In addition some payment apps, such as PayPal, are good in a variety of different places.

Problems with a Cashless Society

It would seem on the surface that this move towards credit cards and mobile payment apps is merely the latest trend, and not anything to worry about. But there are a number of negative consequences to this decline of physical currency.

First of all, with electronic transactions, there’s no privacy. Everything you buy leaves a paper trail leading directly back to you. Advertisers are more than happy to use the records of your purchases to send you targeted ads. This already happens with the purchases you make online. Mobile payment apps make it possible to spam you in the stores as well.

Additionally, not everyone is equipped for a cashless society. Particularly for lower income families, cash is a staple. Around one in thirteen households in this country have no bank accounts or credit cards at all, and can’t afford to be refused service because all they have is cash.

The biggest problem, though, is that the less tangible currency becomes, the less stable it becomes as well. Instead of paper money and coins, currency is all just a bunch of 1s and 0s. Moreover, as this summer’s bitcoin heist proved, when your currency is entirely virtual, it’s subject to hacking and cyberattack. In a cashless society, your savings and your investments can disappear in the blink of an eye, before you even realize anything’s wrong.

The best way to combat this is to put a healthy portion of your investments into something physical, with intrinsic value: something like gold or silver. As physical assets, gold and silver coins won’t destabilize like virtual currency or even paper money. They’re not vulnerable to hacking, either, and their prices tend to remain stable in times of economic difficulty. If you want to protect yourself and your retirement fund against the dangers of a cashless society, then an investment in physical gold and silver is the best way to do it.

Gold Investment is the alternative currency that can safeguard you from these types of events. Putting a portion of your savings into this precious metal will help protect you. Download your free self directed IRA rollover gold IRA information kit today.

With the economy in the condition it is in, lots of people are contemplating different investment options in order to secure their future. Precious metals are a possible investment decision, yet often, many people are unsure why they should invest in precious metals. The multiple reasons differ regarding scope and individual preferences, but in the end, most of us should look into precious metal investments due to a few simple reasons.

Security Compared to Paper Currencies

The world is gradually becoming more interconnected, as the economies of several leading nations are all intrinsically interdependent in some form. As it has become clear recently, when one major country’s economic situation suffers, so too does the situation of several other major countries. That can result in a significant global economic decline, which can impact everyone, investors and ordinary people alike.

Whenever those difficult economic troubles occur, one of the widely performed actions by governments around the world is the deliberate printing of more of their federal currency. This often means that while the supply of global money increases, its true value drops, therefore the currency decreases in value. If considerable percentages of your personal assets are tied in cash, then you will realize that your overall net worth can gradually deteriorate in terms of considerable funds. Unlike with paper money, gold offers the opportunity for traders to hedge against inflation, as whenever the worth of paper money declines, gold’s value, conversely, goes up. A decent investment in gold will allow you to counteract any losses that you may generate during an inflation. Numerous industry experts believe that in the worst case scenario, should a worldwide economic crisis happen, the worth of gold would sky rocket, to the point where it would be worth more than most other commodities. While it is a rather extreme scenario to consider, the truth is that investing in gold could well prevent such financial problems from occurring, even on a smaller scale.

Portfolio Expansion

Due to the reason previously mentioned, robust gold investment may help you broaden your portfolio. No matter the amount of experience, many traders are aware of how crucial it is to keep diversified investment portfolio. Even so, a staggering number of traders commonly invest in stocks and shares. When economic declines take place, the value of stocks and shares can be expected to be as adversely impacted as the worth of the dollar itself, which often can further devalue most portfolios. By securing substantial amount of gold in your individual portfolio, you can safeguard it in the event of negative impact on your other investments. When the general value of stocks and shares suffers a downturn, the chances are that gold prices will be steadily increasing. Carefully balancing your portfolio with gold and other precious metals will allow you to foresee just about any economic situation that might arise in the future developments of the market.

Demand and Scarcity

In contrast to paper currency, gold is not something that can just be printed and put into the market. Precious metals must be mined, meaning that there is consistent demand that must be met and which could not be met unless the lengthy and difficult process of mining it is in effect. Historically speaking, there is no indication that the demand for precious metals will ever diminish. Most people value gold, since it projects a strong image in regard to financial wealth and it is an important part of human history. If projections suggest anything, it is that the interest in precious metals will only grow with the passage of time, as more and more developing countries emerge and the worldwide supply of precious metal dwindles. Therefore, with the demand for precious metals on the rise, it makes sense that its worth will rise as well.

Potential Long Term Rewards

People who are considering investing in precious metals must keep the long run in mind, as the price of gold generally fluctuates in the short term. In the long term, however, the overall price is going upwards at a constant pace, despite the periodic downturn. Acquiring precious metals is usually an exceptional financial plan, as long as the investor recognizes that persistence must be taken into consideration when dealing with gold investments. Gold is something which will always possess unique value, and, as such, it must not be taken lightly. Investing in the stock market might be a great way to think about the short term, yet the fact remains that so long as paper money is linked to the worth of the stock, then you will always face the risk of losing your investment in the unfortunate case the business should go bankrupt or suffer another type of economic downturn. On the other hand, should you physically possess gold, in the event of a short-term value dip, you will still be shielded for the future.

Simple and Versatile Trading Alternatives

One of the best advantages of precious metal investment is that traders find it very quick and simple to buy precious metals, especially in recent years. Precious metal investments have become a lot more popular since the invention of the internet, because now there are several ways you can trade precious metals online. Buying gold on the web has become very easy and uncomplicated, as all that you have to do is figure out how much gold you intend to purchase, what form want it to take, and then place your order with the internet gold company. Delivery is often immediate, and in a few days, your precious metals will be delivered straight to your home. Some premiums might need to be considered when purchasing silver, but luckily, one of the best things about investing in precious metals on the internet is that a good number of businesses keep their premiums affordable.

In case you are excited about beginning gold investments, it is a great idea to stop by RegalAssets.com. The many positive experiences dealers have reported with this website have made it the top precious metal company online. Visiting today can help you safeguard your financial future with a simple to use precious metal rollover kit.

Click here to request your free gold IRA investment kit from Regal Assets today to learn how you can diversify and protect your retirement savings.

Last week we learned that the government’s total debt has reached an incredible $19.5 trillion. Since they hit $18.5 trillion in November of 2015, this means it only took them 10 months to pour another trillion onto the national debt pile. The government managed to do this without fighting a recession or a major war.

Nearly all of the money they receive in tax receipts goes to mandatory entitlement programs and the mounting interest on all of this debt. The net result you get from this is debt financing for most traditional government programs such as defense spending, the IRS, and airport security. The government has not suffered from a shortage of lenders in the past.

This is all starting to change now. The Treasury Department’s own most current data reveals that two of the largest foreign lenders to America, China and Japan, have already started reducing their over $2.3 trillion worth of American debt instrument holdings.

The Federal Reserve has been a reliable buyers since the financial crisis as well. They have increased their debt holdings from $479 billion immediately before the financial crisis erupted in 2008 to today’s present $2.46 trillion. This is an impressive over 500% increase in less than a decade.

They will not be a reliable buyer in the future though. Thanks to Congress seizing $20 billion from the Fed at the beginning of 2016, they have a miniscule .8% capital ratio now. This makes the Fed nearly insolvent and unable to create trillions more dollars to buy debt without creating economic instability for the United States.

The biggest single holder of U.S. Treasury debt remains the Social Security fund. For decades now, the program has loaned all of its tax take surplus to the federal government. They have provided trillions of dollars to the U.S. government in these years.

The problem with this source is that both Social Security and Medicare are nearing the end of their so-called surpluses. The board of trustees from Social Security has recently explained that the two largest trust funds start delivering critical deficits in 2020. Only 14 years later they will be depleted.

This gives them only four more years to loan money to the federal government. You can see that the government is going to have to find someone else to loan it money when its largest lender disappears. Otherwise they are forced to resort to capital controls.

This is already happening in Europe. The European Union’s new banking bail in rules mean that they seize account holders’ money over certain minimums whenever an institution is in trouble. Cyprus already did this a few years ago on all accounts over 100,000 Euros.

In European and other countries where negative interest rates are the order of the day, the banks have begun passing through to customers the negative rates. Sometimes these are explained in the forms of new fees to keep cash in current accounts when they do not want to say you have to pay for the privilege of keeping money in the bank.

There is even a move gaining traction in Europe (and the U.S. is studying it) to outlaw holding physical money. This would trap money in negative interest rate banks accounts.

The writing is on the wall. The U.S. government’s debt financing situation is unsustainable. They will be looking for additional dollars to appropriate within only a few short years.

Gold Investment is the alternative currency that can safeguard you from these types of events. Putting a portion of your savings into this precious metal will help protect you. Download your free self directed IRA rollover gold IRA information kit today.

Did you know the government has effectively printed an extra $3.5 TRILLION since the financial crisis by using a controversial, untested monetary policy?

It’s called ‘quantitative easing’, and allows the Fed to basically print money by expanding their balance sheets. Since 2008, the desperate Federal Reserve has bought trillions in unstable mortgages, securities and bonds in an attempt to keep banks solvent and lending. In effect, the Federal Reserved printed trillions of dollars out of thin air, expanding the value of their balance sheet by $3.5 trillion, in three rounds of quantitative easing. This will have grave consequences on the dollar and on your retirement accounts.

Quantitative easing was the largest financial stimulus the world has ever seen. Economists and common sense tell us these policies will dilute the value of the dollar, ushering in years of high inflation that will eat away at the value of savings. What other outcome can there be, when the government basically conjures up money as if by magic, and then pumps it into the economy?

Think of it like this: money is like soup. If you have a bowl of soup, and you dilute it with more and more water, pretty soon you won’t have soup anymore. That’s what printing trillions does to our dollar.

Now, we’re facing hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar – two prospects that should strike fear into the heart of any retiree. This out-of-control money printing will have devastating consequences on the purchasing power of your retirement accounts.

Desperate governments can print all the money they want, but they can’t print more gold. Believe me, they would if they could – and even then it wouldn’t be worth much, just like our dollar. That’s why smart investors looking to hedge against years of money printing are turning to gold and silver IRAs to protect the purchasing power of their hard-earned savings.

Click here to request your free gold IRA investment kit from Regal Assets today to learn how you can diversify and protect your retirement savings.

The multi-day Brexit gold surge back in June was the biggest upward move since 2008 with gold rallying  4.5% the day after the vote. Yesterday, gold had its biggest one-day rally since, rising 1.6%.

This came on the back of Goldman Sachs revising its September rate hike odds down to 40% from its previous 55% prediction just a few days earlier, and the release of deteriorating manufacturing numbers.

This diminishing likelihood of a Federal Reserve rate hike has caused the dollar to fall to more than a one-week low against the Japanese yen and the euro.

As we’ve posted here, numerous big-name billionaires, or in the case of Jacob Rothschild, a trillionaire, have been moving significant portions of their holdings into the yellow metal over the summer.

Lord Rothschild has increased his gold position while simultaneously decreasing his US dollar holdings by around 6%.

His timing is interesting given that the biggest shake-up in the world currency market in decades is set to happen on October 1st, the day before the end of the Jubilee Year, with the Chinese yuan being added into the IMF’s SDR basket.

Rothschild recently said, in his  semi-annual address to shareholders of RIT Capital Partners , “It is impossible to predict the unintended consequences of very low interest rates.”

He acts as though the consequences of low interest rates are unintentional, but artificially suppressed rates are deliberately being used to expand the money supply, keep bankrupt governments operating and are, in effect,  siphoning wealth away from citizens through the hidden tax of price inflation.

The notional value of the Dow Jones has increased, but if you look at the Dow/Gold ratio, you’ll notice a much starker image.  The Dow, in gold terms, is down significantly since the start of the year.

The case for gold was made even stronger in Jackson Hole last week after Janet Yellen hinted that the Federal Reserve may follow in the footsteps of the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank by purchasing assets including equities directly in the marketplace. She suggested that future policy makers explore purchasing “a broader range of assets”.

At the same conference,  Christopher Sims of Princeton University said, “It may take a massive QE program, large enough even to shock taxpayers into a different, inflationary view of the future,” to prevent an all-out collapse.

And around the same time Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhardt said, “We’re entering a brave new world of central banking.”

So, we now have billionaires, trillionaires, academia and the Federal Reserve all stating that we are in uncharted waters and that anything can possibly happen.

In a world where most tax slaves don’t own gold, and retirement accounts are low hanging fruit for greedy governments to seize, many people are likely to get hurt. In fact, it’s been said that  those who lose the least in the upcoming crash will do the best. Physical gold and related securities are the best insurance.  Especially gold-backed or self directed IRAs are much safer than some of their alternatives.

>>FREE Gold IRA Rollover Kit<<

Most people are unaware that the major international banks can not operate without unrestricted access to the U.S. banking system. This is because the dollar is the world’s major reserve currency.

In order for the multinational banks to perform transactions internationally, they must have the ability to settle these transactions in dollars. Otherwise they are out of business.

The U.S. banking system functions as gatekeeper for the U.S. dollar in this way. Yet thanks to actions of the Obama administration, this system is under assault today. In 2014, the U.S. administration fined the French banking giant BNP Paribas a hefty $9 billion because it was working with nations the U.S. was against like Iran and Cuba.

The French bank had not broken any of France’s laws. Yet still they had to pay this punishing fine because they had transgressed against U.S. laws. BNP Paribas attempted to resist the fine but was warned by the American government that they would be ejected from the U.S. banking system if they did not comply.

Needless to say they paid because they could not afford to be cut off from the U.S. dollar as a settlement currency. The $9 billion was a stiff penalty. Losing access to U.S. dollar settlement would have ruined them though.

Under the Obama administration, other banks have suffered similar fates. British banking giants HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Barclays have also been fined billions as well. Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS paid billions in fines for helping U.S. taxpayers evade taxes. This was also not a crime in Switzerland, but it did not matter.

The end result of this aggressive persecution of foreign banks is that the banks quietly began looking for a way to get around U.S. bank and dollar settlement. They found blockchain technology as the answer to their problems. It offers banks a simple and effective means for sending payments to each other directly.

This idea saves them the costs of moving money inefficiently around the U.S. correspondent accounts. More than that, it frees them from having to keep trillions of dollars of funds in U.S. accounts. Soon it will end their dependence on the U.S. banking system and U.S. dollar settlement entirely.

How serious a threat is this? Four of the biggest banks on the planet have just revealed a brand new combined effort to develop a means for settling transactions based on this blockchain technology. Swiss UBS, Spanish Santander Bank, German Deutsche Bank, and American Bank of New York Mellon call this Utility Settlement Coin.

And these major players are not the only ones committed to this type of project. Another group of 15 different Japanese banks has signed on to implement rival technology Ripple backed by Google Ventures. It will similarly allow them to settle their financial transactions directly.

This is not something that will only shake up the U.S. banking system and dollar reserve currency status years from now. The Ripple system is already up and running. Dozens more banks will be participating within 6 months. As for the new Utility Settlement Coin technology, the goal is for it to launch commercially in only 18 months.

International banks will finally achieve their independence from the U.S. regulators who abused their power. Wall Street banks will lose their lucrative foreign correspondent accounts and financial tolls. Foreign banks will no longer need to keep trillions of dollars in the U.S. and purchase American government debt with it.

The Federal Reserve is aware of the threat and has issued a warning that this type of financial technology could create instability in the American financial system.

Protect your portfolio

You can protect yourself from attacks on the U.S. banking system and dollar. By using a part of your assets to purchase gold, you gain the protection of the greatest financial and currency hedge of all time. Consider acquiring some now before the Utility Settlement Coin and competing technologies reduce dependence on and the value of the U.S. dollar.

Click here to request your free gold IRA investment kit from Regal Assets today to learn how you can diversify and protect your retirement savings.