How to invest in gold.

Gold is of these assets which are mostly used for hedging against falling equities but also used as a safe heaven for political, economic or other kind of crisis. This has been seen during current financial crisis and global economic recession. The gold prices topped all time high $1000 this March when stocks found their bottom. The bottom at least for now.

There are several ways how to invest to gold. One of the possible investment is in physical gold ownership. The gold can be purchase as bullion bars, coins or as a numismatic coins.

Investment without interest in physical ownership are based and on exchange traded products. Here is the list of the most liquid Gold ETFs (exchange traded funds):

SPDR Equity Gold (GLD) - Fund tracking performance of gold bullion prices.
Market Vectors Gold Miners (GDX) - Fund follows performance of AMEX Gold Miners index. ADRs with biggest share included in this index are Barrick Gold (ABX), Goldcorp Inc (GG) and Newmont Mining (NEM).
iShares COMEX Gold (IAU) - In fact the same structure like GLD. Also with the same performance.
PowerShares DB Gold Double Long ETN (DGP) - This ETN reflects double performance of Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity index. Keep in mind difference between ETF and ETF.
ProShares Ultra Gold (UGL) - Double performance of gold bullion prices.

Except of ETFs you can use gold futures or other derivatives for your investing to gold. It is the riskiest asset you can use. With ETF you can get usually up to 3 times leverage investment where with futures there is no limitation. On the other side there is bigger potential return on your investment.

For safer play with mutual funds I list here the biggest funds underlying gold assets.
List of precious metal (gold) mutual funds
The best ways to buy gold from MSN - precious metal mutual funds

On top of that there are other possibility how to invest in gold like buying jewelery, gold certificates, shares of gold miners or other gold trading companies and so on.

On latest gold trading analysis like "Energy Fields...and Gold?" you can sign up right here.

New Beta Blogger template for anniversary.

It is being now two years since I started with blogging. StockWeb is my first blog and would still call it as a flagship blog. Recently I begun new financial related blog which is dedicated only to emerging markets and is called Emerging Index.

Blogger template which I had been using was built just by me from scratch. Up to now at StockWeb I made only small adjustments to this template but finally I have decided to switch to new blogspot template. After 2 years. Today I uploaded this new template which you can see right now. I hope it will be easy to use and navigate though the blogsite.

Another milestone in my blogging experience was one year ago when I discovered INO. INO offers interesting tools for traders and investors. Here I list the most useful which you can try:

1. Get Analysis for your tickers. Here you can type as much tickers as you wish and you will receive via email analysis for all selected stocks. No limitations it is for free.
Click Here

2. Have a look for example at Market commentary feature. After accessing the page you can see latest headlines. At the left side bar you have box for free subscription. If you subscribe you'll receive daily for free only top market analysis via email.

Check it out here:



3. Another product is INO TV. After signing up you can receive 4 free trading seminars about investing.




INO also offers affiliate program for bloggers. If you are interested in trying this program you can use this link for signing up. I am here to answer all your questions and help you with set up and optimization.

P/E ratio for global stock indexes.

I have written already several posts on the topic of fundamental screeners, historical fundamental data for stocks or global equity markets. Here you can have a look to some of my articles with interesting tools.

Historical P/E ratio displayed at charts for US stocks. Provided by Bar Chart website.

Fundamental stock screeners US stocks and ADR, ETF, CEF. Available indicators like P/E, P/BV, Dividend yield, P/Sales, P/Cash flow and others.

Fundamental historical data. This articles includes 3 interesting web sources for fundamental historical data.

Until the end of 2008 there was nice functionality at official Standard and Poor's website where you could see main fundamental indicators for all global stock markets. Unfortunately this function has been switched off and I was researching another source. P/E ratio for global equities indexes you can retrieve at Finacial Times official website at World Equities section. There is so called equity tables in print. You simply choose "Ratios - Yield & P/E by country".

Buffett, Rogers and Soros portfolios.

Recently Warren Buffett has been interviewed by CNBC where he provided his prediction for economy and stock markets. He can see stabilizing economy but not significant signs of economic recovery. As he mentioned financial crisis is over. He still believes in attractive valuation at the stock markets. In his opinion stocks are definitely better for next 10 years than government bonds. Among the industries he prefers Consumer goods and Financials. His portfolio holdings are Coca Cola (KO), Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI) and Wells Fargo (WFC)

Jim Rogers is neutral right now. No short, no long positions. He considers Canadian dollar as currency with good future against British Pound or US dollar due to increasing level of government debt in US and Great Britain. His outlook is positive with soft commodities.

George Soros is bearish with US dollar as well as Jim Rogers. He is exposed mainly at Oil & Gas and Utilities industries. His current portfolio includes companies like Energy Corp (ETR), Plains Exploration & Production Company (PXP) and Walgreen Company (WAL).

For all stocks you can receive free trend analysis. It is enough if you type ticker here.

Trading analysis: S&P500 and USD/CAD.

Adam provides his video update analysis on S&P500. He predicts movements based on MACD and setting timing for buy/sell based on Fibonacci retracement tool and Welles Wilder parabolic SAR. This clip provides very easy explanation how this use analytics and indicators and make simple technical analysis.


Second video is focused on Forex trading. It shows long position in US dollar against Canadian dollar. The best in this video is INO's Triangle method which basically simplifies the whole technical analysis. Based on the calculation of indicators, movements it gives just assessment to go long or short.

Henry hub natural gas seasonality.

Natural gas usually follows closely crude oil prices. But the evolution of recent weeks argues against this statement. Main reasons for sharp decline in natural gas prices as well as crude oil prices in second half of 2008 were due to the economic slowdown and recession. In case of natural gas producers the output has not been decreased in similar way like for crude oil and increasing inventories caused still falling natural gas prices. But recent numbers shows lower inventory levels of natural gas and with the signs of economic recovery could be right time to become bullish with natural gas. In addition to that seasonality plays important role in price determination. Usually end of summer is start point for price rebound. The picture below shows price trends for natural gas prices in Henry hub from 2004 till 2009


source: Official Nebraska Government website

Asset class performance.

It is important to keep an eye on different class assets performance. It gives you insight where the money flows. There are some good quality websites which bring you performance for example on weekly basis. Good one is StockCharts. You can see bar chart below showing performance of different assets for past week.


Currently US stock markets offer such a wide range of investment products and derivatives that easily cover all different classes of assets. In fact it is enough to trade Exchange Traded Funds at NYSE to cover all of them. US, foreign, emerging stocks and bonds, REITs, commodities, TIPS and cash. I have listed below all kinds of asset classes and their relevant ETF.

High Yield Bonds	iShares iBOXX High Yield	(HYG)
TIPS	iShares Barclays TIPS	(TIP)
Emerging markets bonds	iShares EM bonds	(EMB)
Cash	SPDR 3 month T-Bill ETF	(BIL)
US bonds	Barclays agg. Bond fund	(AGG)
Foreign Dev Market bonds	iShares Intl. bond fund	(IGOV)
Commodities	iShares GSCI commodity	(GSG)
Emerging markets stocks	iShares MSCI EM Index	(EEM)
US stocks	iShares Russell 3000	(IWV)
Foreign Dev Market stocks	iShares MSCI EAFE Index	(EFA)
REITs	Wilshire REIT Index	(RWR)

For all ETFs you can receive free trend analysis. It is enough if you type ticker here.