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People also ask
Is gold a precious metal?
What are precious metals?
Why is gold a valuable metal?
What are precious metals used for?
Is gold a chemical element?
Why is gold so popular?
- Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.
- Gold. Gold is the easiest precious metal to recognize because of its unique yellow color. Gold is popular because of its color, malleability, and conductivity.
- Silver. Silver is a popular precious metal for jewelry, but its value extends well beyond beauty. It has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all the elements and has the lowest contact resistance.
- Platinum: The Most Precious? Platinum is a dense, malleable metal with exceptional corrosion resistance. It is nearly 15 times rarer than gold yet widely used.
- Palladium. Palladium is similar to platinum in its properties. Like platinum, this element can absorb an enormous quantity of hydrogen. It is a rare, malleable metal, able to maintain stability at high temperatures.
Historically, precious metals were important as currency but are now regarded mainly as investment and industrial raw materials. Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium each have an ISO 4217 currency code. The best known precious metals are the precious coinage metals, which are gold and silver.
- What Are Precious Metals?
- Understanding Precious Metals
- Investing in Precious Metals
- Example of a Precious Metal: Gold
- How Many Precious Metals Are There?
- What Is the Most Precious Metal?
- What Is the Main Gold ETF?
- The Bottom Line
Precious metals are metals that are rare and have a high economic value due to various factors, including their
, use in industrial processes, hedge against currency inflation, and role throughout history as a
The most popular precious metals with investors are gold, platinum, and silver.
Precious metals are rare commodities that have long been valued by investors.
They were historically used as the basis for money, but today are traded mainly as a portfolio diversifier and hedge against inflation.
Traders and investors can buy precious metals through several mechanisms, including owning physical bullion or coin, derivatives markets, or precious metals ETFs.
In the past, precious metals played a central role in the global economy because many currencies were either physically minted using precious metals or else backed by them, as in the case of the
Today, however, investors purchase precious metals mainly as a financial
As an investment, precious metals are often sought after to
portfolios and as a store of value, particularly as a hedge against
and during times of financial uncertainty. For commercial buyers, precious metals may also be an essential component for products such as jewelry or electronics.
Three of the major factors influencing
Investors who want to add precious metals to their portfolios have several ways of doing so. Those wishing to hold the metals directly can purchase physical
, such as minted coins or bars, and then store them in a safety deposit box. This method of ownership has the advantage of reducing
but also increases storage and insurance costs.
Other popular methods include buying
for a particular metal or purchasing shares in publicly traded companies engaged in the exploration or production of precious metals.
offer a variety of strategies
Gold is the most high-profile precious metal, consistently generating lots of attention from the financial media, as well as market participants. Until 1973, the U.S. currency system was based on the gold standard.
Several factors account for an increased desire to hoard the shiny yellow metal:
When banks and money are perceived as unstable and/or political stability is questionable, gold has often been sought out as a safe store of value.
in the equity, bond, or real estate markets are negative or are perceived to drop in the future, people regularly flock to gold as an asset.
War and political upheaval have always sent people into a gold-hoarding mode. An entire lifetime's worth of savings can be made portable and stored until it needs to be traded for foodstuffs, shelter, or safe passage to a less dangerous destination.
Gold reached a peak inflation-adjusted price of roughly $2,200 in February 1980, before declining to a low of under $400 in April 2001. In the past 20 years, its price has generally risen, reaching nearly $2,000 in October 2020 and breaking over $2,000 later that year. Gold price as of June 2022 is around $1,850.
There are eight metals that are considered precious. They are
, platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium. Of the precious metals that are not gold or silver,
There are two metrics used to determine what is the most precious metal, those being price and rarity. The most expensive precious metal is rhodium. As of June 2022, rhodium carries a price tag of $14,000 an ounce. Compare that to around $980 for platinum and around $1,850 for gold.
by total assets is the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (
). The next four ETFs are the iShares Gold Trust (
), the SPDR Gold MiniShares Trust (
), the abrdn Physical Gold Shares ETF (
Precious metals are mined and traded as a way to hedge against inflation and offer the benefit of being able to invest in a physical asset. That makes these metals beneficial in times of geopolitical upheaval, when you may need to leave the country or protect assets and don't trust or believe in the strength of your domestic equity markets.
- Jason Fernando
Oct 10, 2024 · Gold, a dense lustrous yellow precious metal and a chemical element of Group 11. Gold is attractive in color and brightness, durable to the point of virtual indestructibility, highly malleable, and usually found in nature in a comparatively pure form.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Gold is a chemical element; it has symbol Au (from Latin aurum) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal, a group 11 element, and one of the noble metals.
- COMEX
- 0.1
- Metal
- 10 USD
Jan 10, 2024 · But what makes gold a precious metal? We explore what’s behind the value of the rare metal and why investing in gold is worthwhile. We also explain why people worldwide long for this most valuable of metals.
Gold is a precious metal, prized for its beauty and valued by nearly every culture. Learn about gold and discover its long history here.
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