Of course land; but say you had a few thousand, and were going to be disappearing for a couple years, and wanted something you could store and make money reselling when you came back. Copper? Collector's items of some sort? Antiques? What physical investments do you think would have the best growth and reliability over a period of within a decade?
"buy land, they've stopped making it" - Mark Twain to be fair, at the moment you could invest in anything. cherea says gold, though had you apply the greater fool theory of economics there's only so far that will go right now but it is hardly going to lose it's value, it just becomes more or less valuable at any given time. i believe (don't quote me) it's like 30% up in value - so everyone is buying it interestingly, silver is up 60%. it is the most valuable commodity at the moment. but then oil (obviously), copper, platinum and coffee are all great investments. i'd go with oil. i purchased shares in bp in april, i image as we are are using more and (currently) finding less it could make for an interesting future. it's a pretty vicarious investment though, because prices are rising at the pumps. i'd like to see it as profit as compensation. but, overall, things change and a decade is thus too hard to estimate. commodities, unless finite, become more valuable as our monetary system implodes (we are operating on a fiat system, so all value is lost in the present day). but yeah, look through the CPI - try and suss out where the future lays!
I like gold because I think it is a conservative investment. I wouldn't have to be checking quotes every day on the internet biting my nails, or listen to speeches from the Arab League+Hugo Chavez with my morning coffee. Since the dollar looks like it's just going to be collapsing indefinitely until China finally becomes the 1st world economy, the tendency appears to be that gold will keep going moderately up for like, centuries.
it'll go up, sure. i wasn't disagreeing - i was digressing about short term investments. as i said, to reiterate, the fiat system is losing all value on money the gold standard is never going to die. it's tangible. but it's never going to rise quickly. it's value is interchangeable because of the amount of people who are interested in it at any given point. plus, rather annoying, it's an awfully expensive investment. i suppose you put in what you get out but a share in BP was around 30 pence (50 odd now) when i purchased mine. gold is somewhere in the region of £50. but, i'm not disagreeing with you. all i disagree with is this idea china will become this inevitable superpower. they are pretty stupid they watch the states grow, get greedy and lose it all, so what do they do - grow at stupid rates.
but honestly, i wasn't disagreeing with you. it's 30% up in value for christs sake it's timing, gold is coming down on the ftse (uk) a bit at the moment, so i'd wait a little before buying into it. in fact, looking at the ftse it is obvious something somewhere in the world has gone wrong. it's down strait across :frown:
Rubies. They're price is artificially inflated because the major producer of red rubbies is the military government of Burma. They're producing very conservative numbers and waiting for that number to run low. Now is the time to buy them, and than to sell them before the Junta runs into any sort of trouble, because they will flood the market with them. If Cambodia had a commodities market right now, I'd be buying the hell out of Kampot pepper, because it will be world famous within a few years. Now my only option is to set up a network of suppliers myself, which'll require some more investment on my end. Setting up a website, buying and shipping Depex. But it'll still be a great market. I'm heavily considering setting up a site to sell straight from Cambodia. The problem being as soon as someone else realizes the money in it, I'm going to have to set up a freight network for it, because shipping air isn't viable in the long term.
I agree in investing in land. Far most important. Next i would say guns, to protect your land. I would pick anything with $ value such as gold, silver and such as last investments. We may one day see the world with no value in gold or silver. Paper bills on a global scale are losing value. Some much quicker than others, some not so much.
If you don't think the world economy is going to crash then I would buy some copper/stainless steel/and other metal. Metal is easy to buy/sell by the pound. Gold is an investment that could go up or down based on the world economy (which will probably get better at this point). As the ecomony picks up copper/stainless will be in more demand. If you think the world economy is going to crash then I would invest in a few guns, some long term meal rations, and water-if the economy crashes you can't eat gold.
put a bunch of gas in the metal tank and bury it underground in your back yard. if you have kids and they have kids and gas runs out or something it would be very valuable.
Eh, within a couple decades drilling will probably be more expensive than farming fossil fuels. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...rld-of-fossil-fuels-on-demand/article1871149/