If you are an experienced investor, you know the ups and downs of the market very well. Obviously, highs and lows are great when they happen: they’re the lows you have to guard against.

Then what do you do?

Experts and analysts agree that diversification is key. If you’ve done your research, you’ve found that one of the best hedges you can make against a stock market crash, and it will crash, it’s just a matter of when, are precious metals, especially gold and silver. Now that he has decided to try gold and/or silver, he has some questions about the price.

What is a “spot” price?

The selling price of gold and silver is based on what is called the “spot” price. This price reflects all the fundamental and technical influences present in the market at that very moment. This price must include all costs of extraction, processing and other associated costs. This price is opposed to “ask” and “ask” prices: a “ask” price is related to the sell price of the coin or bar and the “ask” price is related to the repurchase price of a commodity. The “spot” price is the spread between the “bid” and “ask” prices set in the market you are trading in for that region for the commodity trade of the given metal, for that trading day.

What the gold and silver will cost you

The price you pay for any precious metal will always be slightly above the actual spot price. On the contrary, when you sell the price will always be a little lower. The reason for this is simple: this is how dealers do business. This spread allows precious metals traders to cover their overhead costs: website expenses, office rent, salaries, insurance, etc. Dealers must charge customers a small premium on the venue simply to cover costs and stay in business.

How to get the best price for your gold

• Keep your metals in optimal conditions. If for any reason your metal tarnishes or becomes dirty it will typically sell for less than mint condition items. This is regardless of the fact that either clean or dirty both contain the same amount of metal.

• Trading in volume will give you the best price: the more metal you buy or sell, the better price you will get. There are some merchants who set their selling prices to be the same regardless of volume. Typically, many retailers will give you reprieves when you buy in volume. If a company offers you free and secure shipping on your order purchased online, even better. This will allow you to stay as close to the spot price as possible.

• Doing business with distributors who are also wholesalers allows the buyer to enjoy the price advantage that comes with industrial size bulk purchases. Large-scale industrial purchases allow price discounts that the distributor can pass on to the customer. To earn these benefits, customers will be required to purchase minimum amounts, generally no less than $10,000.

Purchase precious metals in your retirement accounts

Ideally, you want to do business with a company that understands not only the buying and selling of precious metals, but also IRA rollovers and rollovers from 401(k) retirement plans. Also, the business must be proficient in the various IRS rules. You want to make sure you get all the benefits that owning a Gold IRA has to offer.

Learn more

To help you make the right decisions, a new mini-course has been created. This course can not only help new investors find answers to many of their questions, but it will also provide them with information so they can know what to ask their prospective distributors. The course is titled “The Secret to Successful Gold Investing” and is now available as a FREE download. In this course you will find information that could help you save thousands of dollars and avoid many of the typical mistakes of newbies.
With gold at current market prices, there may be no better time to invest than now.