How do physical precious metals compare to mining stocks and commodity futures?
Mining stocks and commodity futures are paper assets. Mining stocks can track the price of precious metals but can be subject to disappointing earnings, poor management teams and unforeseen mining accidents. Commodity futures are merely paper contracts that promise to deliver precious metals at a future date (less than 1% of these contracts go to physical delivery). Precious metals are hard assets. Gold, silver, platinum and palladium bars, coins and rounds can be delivered immediately, conveniently stored, uniformly stacked and have retained true wealth for over 6,000 years.
