What Is Inflation?

Before diving too far into the details, it’s important to explain inflation and illustrate why it is so relevant to your financial situation. Inflation refers to the general increase in prices over time. Because of inflation, individual units of money tend to lose value over time. For example, 50 years ago, you may have been able to buy a bottle of beer for 30 cents. Today, the same kind of beer from the same company may cost $1.50.

Inflation is common under normal economic conditions. The U.S. average prices typically inflate by about 2% every year, but that rate can rise or fall. Currently, most experts predict a higher rate of inflation over the next couple of years. Thus, it’s extremely important to invest your money so that your wealth can grow at a pace that beats inflation. Otherwise, you run the risk of effectively losing wealth over time.

What Is Liquidity?

An asset with high liquidity is easy to convert into cash or exchange for other goods. Cash is more liquid than any other asset. As long as you’re using your area’s national currency, you can exchange cash for any legal good or service. Many people are very willing to buy gold, so it’s also a highly liquid asset. In contrast, a car has very low liquidity. It may take a very long time to find someone to buy a car at a fair price. You need cash to deal with emergencies and expenses, so should have enough liquid assets to meet your everyday financial needs.

What Are Stocks?

When you invest in a company’s stock, you’re basically purchasing a small share of ownership in that company. When the company does well, the price of its stock increases, so you can sell your shares for more money. When it doesn’t do well, stock prices plummet, and your portfolio loses value.

A stock’s value is not based on any single factor. While a company’s performance, marketing efforts, and other aspects of its operations may contribute towards the value of its stock, it can also be affected by various other things. For example, a resounding speech from a marketing executive can make a stock’s value rise, but a harsh meme could make it fall.

Like any other investment, to profit in the stock market, you need to buy at a low price and sell at a higher price. However, because stock prices can rapidly change, you need to constantly pay close attention to the market to make the biggest gains. Otherwise, you could miss the best opportunities to make the most profit.

Advantages of Gold Over Stocks

➡️ Liquidity

While you may be able to sell a stock in minutes, there’s no guarantee that you’ll find a buyer who is willing to pay a fair price. Naturally, popular and well-known stocks are more liquid than other stocks. However, the market always changes, and a stock that may be easy to sell today may take a longer time to sell in the future.

Unless you live in an extremely remote area, there’s a good chance that you can find a reputable gold buyer within 20 minutes of your home. To sell gold, you don’t need to deal with any third parties, so converting your gold into cash is super easy. While you may have to wait hours or days to sell a stock, you can sell your gold in mere minutes. Thus, gold is much more liquid than any stock.

➡️ Independence From Digital Infrastructure

You can buy and sell gold in person. You don’t need to work with any third parties, and you don’t need to use a trading app or website. In contrast to gold, stocks and other paper investments are recorded in digital databases. While these databases are pretty secure, they can still be hacked, and you may not be able to access your investment platform in areas with poor internet connectivity. As long as your gold is physically with you, you can sell it almost anywhere, so you don’t need to deal with online platforms, brokers, or digital devices.

➡️ Privacy

The ownership of most investments can be found in various public ledgers. However, nobody needs to find out about your private gold stash. As long as you are subtle and don’t tell everyone about your gold, then your investment can remain private. While you can keep your gold hidden from the general public, you should still remember to report your earnings to the relevant tax authorities when you make a sale.

➡️ Stability

The value of gold has grown by nearly 550% over the last 30 years. While it has had some minor ups and downs, on average, it has grown at a rate that far surpasses every single year. Thus, gold is more likely to grow over several years or decades, and it will protect you from economic downturns and market volatility.

➡️ Less Susceptible to Volatile Factors

A stock’s value can be affected by a huge variety of factors, so it can be difficult to accurately predict a stock’s future growth. For example, a burgeoning electric car company may seem like the next big thing, but a critical news article about an important executive or stakeholder could completely derail the value of the company’s stock.

Even if the article turns out to be full of lies down the road, the damage might not be reversed for quite some time. Unless you’re omnipotent, there is no way of predicting such seemingly random circumstances. Gold, on the other hand, is not susceptible to such disruptions. The value of gold won’t be affected by things that are as unpredictable as an eccentric CEO or bad weather.

➡️ Safe and Easy Storage

An ounce of gold sells for about $1,800 (at the time this article was written), and it takes up about as much space as a potato chip. Unless you’re spending billions of dollars on gold, you should be able to store a ton of value in a very small space. Quality safes are very affordable, and you can always keep your gold in a safe deposit box at your local bank for a modest fee. Since stocks depend on much more volatile digital infrastructure, so you may not be able to access them as easily as you can access your gold.

➡️ Little Technical Knowledge Required

With stocks, you have to constantly scour the internet for the latest news and updates about all of the companies that you’ve invested in. That can be a very time-consuming process, and even with all that research, an unforeseen event can still make your portfolio take a huge hit. In contrast, gold doesn’t require nearly as much research or special knowledge. If you buy gold and wait a few years, it should be worth much more when you finally decide to sell it. It’s that simple. While you can do more research to optimize your earnings, you can still make a hefty profit by sitting back and patiently waiting for your gold's value to grow.

➡️ Global Reach

Gold is prized everywhere. You can find a buyer in any country, and because gold is so value-dense, you can take a lot of gold with you wherever you go. You can simply find a buyer, negotiate a price, and convert your gold into the local currency in just a few minutes.

➡️ Less Affected by Politics

Many companies sell goods are services that are regulated by governments in some way or another. For example, many governments have varying rules about soft drinks, and some jurisdictions levy extra consumption taxes on certain sugary beverages. Such policies affect sales, and a decrease in sales can affect a company’s overall performance.

Although investing in a soft drink company may seem like a good idea now, a series of laws, taxes, or regulations could affect the value of your shares overnight. In contrast, gold is not subject to nearly as many regulations. It’s not unhealthy and poses no safety risks, so government entities don’t have any good reason to significantly regulate the gold market.

➡️ Gold Can’t Become Worthless Overnight

If a company fails, then its stock will be worthless. Gold is a commodity, so it can’t go out of business and lose all of its value overnight. People will always need gold, and even if some companies that deal with gold fail, gold will continue to be highly valued across many industries.

Gold Will Make Your Portfolio Safe

Gold is an extremely safe, valuable, and liquid investment, and it has a ton of growth potential. Although stocks play an important role in any investment strategy, it’s a good idea to buy gold to hedge against market volatility and protect your long-term financial health. Gold is super profitable, and demand for this precious metal continues to grow, so it's a good idea to invest before prices rise.