GoldMoney Explained

 This was the brainchild of highly-respected gold watcher James Turk.  Goldmoney was structured with a cast iron guarantee that there will always be 100% gold backing of every unit of currency (called “goldgrams” in this case) in circulation, and they claim that some others do not have the same cast-iron guarantees in their small print.  Whether this is true or not is hard to say, as for an ordinary investor the small-print is difficult to understand, but the discussions and articles available make interesting reading when deciding on the safety of providers you are considering.

Goldmoney, like e-Gold did, also tries to offer the use of Goldmoney as a medium of payment.  This however is not very heavily used right now, and the majority of investors are gold bugs simply buying gold and silver and holding it.

What could appeal to British or EU citizens about Goldmoney is that it is Jersey-based.  You may trust and understand the rules of Jersey more than those of the Caribbean or Panama.  This is not to say that other organisations are unsafe.  A US-citizen may just as easily understand Panama and believe it to be much safer than Jersey.

As time went by, Goldmoney has opened a variety of vaults to cater for the requirements of international buyers, including London, New York, Zurich, Singapore and Hong Kong.

GoldMoney also has a Silver option, and this represents an excellent opportunity for European Union buyers to buy Silver bullion without legally paying any VAT.  More latterly they also introduced the ability to hold the national currencies of Dollars, Pounds or Euros in your Goldmoney account and receive interest on it.  You can then switch your holding between any of the five denominations (including the two metals), as you see fit.

Knowing that it’s the fees that make investors poor and brokers rich, you are probably best off not utilising this feature.  The fees will quickly eat into your returns, and a buy-and-hold strategy is probably best.

Payment into GoldMoney is by bank transfer.  Payment out can be made by direct bank transfer.

One other aspect of GoldMoney worthy of mention is that at one point the terms and conditions said that if your account is not logged into for 12 years the ownership of your gold reverted to Goldmoney.  Okay,  it sounds unlikely, but consider what would happen if you died and never told anybody about your holding or even if you were unable to use the internet for 12 years due to some kind of accident or national crisis.

Overall, a highly respected organisation with the reputation of a known “gold-watcher” behind it.  Even if you don’t buy Goldmoney then there are articles available for free on the website that make interesting reading.

BullionVault Explained

 This article is about investing in one of the biggest online Gold investment Websites - BullionVault.

Founded by Paul Tustain, BullionVault sits somewhere between Goldmoney, for safety and Gold storage, and the trading services mentioned earlier.  Bullionvault is UK-based, although an additionally interesting feature is the ability to store your gold in their New York, London or Zurich gold vaults.  Dependent on which country you are a citizen of, you will probably feel most comfortable placing your gold outside of that country so that is not subject to your local government jurisdiction, so top marks for considering that feature.

An interesting aspect of the three separate vaults is that these could be considered as separate currencies in their own right.  For example, if at some point in the future there was a repeat of the 1930s US Gold confiscation, gold stored in a New York Vault might become priced significantly lower than gold stored in a Zurich vault, as US holders try to sell and place their gold outside their own jurisdiction.

BullionVault allows you to buy and sell Gold on their impressive looking trading platform, where buyers and sellers of gold from each vault can meet and state their required selling/buying prices, so if you are more inclined to hold gold, occasionally sell on a dip, then buy in again later, then this could well be the best service for you.

Their fees for transactions and monthly storage are really low too, so they are very worthy of investigation.  The storage fee is currently $4 per month fixed, regardless of holding size, and only payable for the months in which you held Gold.

Again, Bullionvault has proved popular with Gold Bugs accumulating gold for the future financial crisis they believe is in the offing.

Payment into BullionVault is by bank transfer.  Payment out is by bank wire transfer to your chosen bank account.

In recent years, they introduced a silver option.  That they took so long may have been something to do with BullionVault being UK-based and the UK charging VAT on silver sales, which could, to many observers, seem to be another example of government getting in the way of free trade.

Diversifying Your Portfolio

Sometimes it's worth diversifying your portfolio outside the world of ISAs.  After all, some things can't be held within these accounts : physical gold, silver, property, a lot of foreign shares and...domain names.

Yep, I've been feeling for some years domain names are the ultimate virtual landgrab (more on virtual money such as Bitcoin another day!), but to give you an insight into the kind of domain name portfolio I feel might perform well the next ten years, check this domain name portfolio out.

Daily Reckoning Review

Once upon a time there was this really great free daily investment newsletter called "The Daily Reckoning". Without a doubt, the most interesting contributor to this daily newsletter was Bill Bonner, owner of Agora publishing, the owner of the newsletter. For years and years, it bleated on and on about libertarianism, anti-government rhetoric and most of all, invest in gold.

Considering the last bit of advice began in the early 2000s, when gold was a quarter of what it is now, that was impressive advice to be given for free. Even better, the newsletter was beefed up daily with top-notch articles by other leading investment commentators, the names of which will be familiar to many : The Mogambo Guru, Dr Marc Faber, the evergreen Doug Casey, Addison Wiggin...hell, it even printed articles written by Brian Durrant or William Rees-Mogg from the premium weekly newsletter The Fleet Street Letter, completely negating the need to buy that over-hyped newsletter, which you can read a review of here.

All in all, if you could ignore the advertising and not allow yourself to be overseduced by their instant get-rich quick headlines for premium investment services, such as the Oxford Club, Strategic Investment and whatever other snake oil Agora tried to peddle, you really were getting a lot for your money, which of course, you were, since it was free.

All good things must come to an end though and it seems like this one has. No longer is the newsletter the equivalent of a sly choccy biscuit at the office desk with a coffee mid-afternoon. It started arriving in my mailbox around midnight and hit a new low when Bill Bonner took a 4 month sabbatical in Argentina early 2012 and left the reins in the incapable hands of Joel Bowman, some young Australian upstart who really has written some weird stuff, including proclaiming "piracy is good" but stopping short of offering all Agora content free and then the next day imploring us that we shouldn't be allowed to have too many kids, so clearly the free market only extends so far in his eyes. Now, it has somehow turned it into "The Daily Timeshare", constantly pressing us with threats of government confiscation which we can only avoid by utilising one of their advertisers in finding cheap property in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, New Zealand or wherever else might be safe. Although NZ clearly didn't work out too well for Kim Dotcom and MegaUpload, did it?

I've taken my name off the mailing list. Come back Bill, you might have been a bore in real life, or at least I imagine you probably are, but your insights were impressive. I guess all the other guest contributors have given up on it too and last I checked, the website is down and now redirects you to Moneyweek, another Agora publication.

*SIGH*