黄金：你所不知道的五大隐患

源济

万维读者网    2010-09-30 04:16:35

万维读者网记者唯一编译报道：MarketWatch刊登的文章说，现在黄金价格不断创新高，从去年到现在金价上升30%，在过去十年里金价上升400%，使得人人觉得投资黄金好。但是很多投资者不知道的是投资金子并不象看上去那么简单。

黄金有很多隐患，如果只看金价的话是看不出来的。

一. 高税率：根据美国联邦税法，与贵金属有关的投资产品比如ETFs或者SPDR Gold Trust, iShare Silver Trust都是被看做收藏品来收税的，其资本增殖部分的税率是28%，而普通股票的资本增殖税率仅为15%。也就是说，你以为自己在黄金上赚了很多，但是其中一大部分是要用来交税的。

二. 零收入：很多黄金投资者不可能将这笔资金放在黄金里20年不动用，因为黄金是不会给投资者带来固定收入的，而很多投资者是需要定期收入的，比如上了年纪的退休人士。因此，黄金不是适合所有人投资的市场，虽然过去几年黄金稳步上升，这并不意味着投资黄金的风险小。

三. 黄金制品假冒伪劣：比如金币，现在就有不少假金币泛滥于市场。一些投资者在不做调查的情况下从当铺或者无名金店买了假金币，这些地方甚至能伪造证书。因此投资者必须懂得保护自己，避免上当受骗。

四 .黄金的储藏成本高：象金首饰一样，购买黄金的一部分费用是永远拿不回来的，好比买房子交的经纪费。除此之外，储藏黄金也是有要花钱的，如果要租用储蓄箱的话，这部分每年可能要花几百块。因此，黄金只是从纸面上看是“安全”的，但是买实物需要储藏的话是个高成本的行为。

五. 黄金也会贬值的：爱好黄金的人士肯定会说金子不会象雷曼兄弟公司股票一样变成废纸。不错，黄金价值不会降到为零，但是以为黄金不贬值是愚蠢的。

在八十年代初，黄金升到每盎司850美元，两个月后跌了40%。1981年金价平均价位是每盎司460美元，然后继续下跌，到2000年平均价格为每盎司 280美元。如果一个40多岁的人在80年初金价高点买了黄金，要等28年后才可能等到金价重新升到850美元的水平，这笔钱要是用来退休是不要指望了，除非他能够活到80岁。

黄金是一种投资产品，主要用途是对抗通货膨胀，因此不论它升得多高，总是会跌下来的，有时候还跌得很快，比如80年代初。

源济

Sept. 29, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EDT
Five hidden costs of gold
Commentary: Investing in gold isn’t as easy as it looks

By Jeff Reeves

ROCKVILLE, Md. (MarketWatch) — There’s a lot of talk right now about how gold is booming, and how gold bugs who have been stashing bullion under their mattresses over the last decade or so have made a killing.

That may be true if you look at the price of the yellow stuff per ounce. The price of an ounce of gold is up about 30% in the last year, or over 400% in the last 10 years. How does that relate to actual returns for investors?
Testing out Apple TV

Watch a demonstration of the new Apple TV device. Courtesy Fox News.

The truth is that gold has steep hidden costs, and that looking at the numbers on paper doesn’t tell the whole story. Here are big costs many investors overlook.

Higher taxes

The affinity for gold investing and a dislike of the government seem to go hand in hand, from predictions that massive government debt will render the dollar worthless to conspiracy theories that there will be another Executive Order 6102 in which Uncle Sam loots your safe deposit box and seizes your gold.

But the biggest reason for gold investors to get mad at the feds is their tax bracket. The IRS taxes precious metal investments — including gold ETFs like the SPDR Gold Trust (CONSOLIDATED:GLD)   and iShares Silver Trust (CONSOLIDATED:SLV)   — as collectibles. That means a long-term capital gains tax of 28% compared with 15% for equities (20% if and when the Bush tax cuts expire next year).

While you may see your gold as a bunker investment, the IRS will treat you the same as if you were hoarding Hummel figurines. And that means a bigger portion of your gold profits go to the tax man.

Zero income

Just as the math game on gold price appreciation doesn’t tell the whole story, the lack of regular payouts is another reason why the long-term profits quoted in gold are incomplete. Many long-term investors can’t afford to stash their savings in the back yard for 20 years. Income is a very valuable feature of many investments and gold simply doesn’t provide that. Read about seven dividend stocks with better than 11% yield.

Remember, simply looking at returns in a vacuum can’t tell you whether an investment is “good” or “bad.” Is it a good idea for a 70-year-old retiree on a fixed income to bet on penny stocks because they could generate huge profits? Even if those trades pay off, 99 out of 100 advisers would say something akin to “You got lucky this time, but don’t tempt fate. Quit while you’re ahead and don’t be so aggressive.”

Similarly, the volatile and income-starved gold market is not a place for everyone. Just because past returns for gold have been so stellar, that does not mean that gold is low risk or that investors who need a secure source of regular income will be well-served.

Gold scams take a toll

In a previous article, I detailed gold coin scams in detail. They include false gradings on the quality of the coins, the use of cheaper alloys instead of pure gold and even brazen scams where you don’t actually even own the gold that you buy. And that’s just on the coins front. Scams abound in pawn shops and “cash for gold” enterprises that refuse to give you a true value for your jewelry or other gold items. Read about five gold coin scams.

You’d think it would be obvious that precious metals should never be purchased from anyone other than a broker or seller of good repute who provides proper documentations. But many investors fail to do their homework, or worse, can’t tell forged documents from real ones.

Gold is ready-made to be a retail sales item, and with that comes all manner of unscrupulous activity. Vigilant investors can protect themselves, but do not underestimate the very real price of being taken to the cleaners by a gold scam if you don’t do your homework.

High ownership and storage costs

Maybe through some creative accounting or selective amnesia at tax time you can mitigate the tax burden of gold. But one expense you can’t as easily avoid is the high ownership cost of gold. After all, it’s not like you mined it yourself — and all those middlemen between the ore and you want to get paid.

The first is that old tightwad Uncle Sam again. Even if you can avoid him going on the capital gains front, he gets you coming into gold via sales tax on most jewelry and coins. And then there are the high transaction costs and commissions that gold can carry. Anyone who has bought jewelry knows significant markups are part of the precious metals trade, and that’s the same for investment gold as it is for engagement rings. The bottom line is that some of your initial buy-in goes towards the business of gold and you’ll never get it back, not unlike realtor fees or broker fees.

And then there’s the additional cost of storing your gold. You have to pay a fee for a safe deposit box, and if you have a lot of gold, that can run you a few hundred bucks a year for a good-sized box. Of course if you’re afraid of that Order 6102 scam pulled by FDR you likely have your gold at home in a safe – so that’s a one-shot deal. But are you really foolish enough to distrust the government but trust your gold stash to be safe without insurance?

The presumed “safety” of gold is good on paper, but obtaining the actual metal and keeping it safely stored is a costly endeavor.

Yes, gold can lose value

Proponents of gold love to claim that gold has never been worthless like Lehman Bros. or GM. And while this is true on its face, it is actually a half-truth. While gold may never become worthless, it is foolish to think it will never lose value.

Consider that after reaching a record high of $850 per ounce in early 1980, gold plummeted 40% in two months. The average price for gold in 1981 fell to a mere $460 an ounce — and continued nearly unabated until bottoming with an average price of around $280 in 2000. For those folks in their 40s and 50s who bought gold at that 1980 high, it took them 28 years to reclaim the $850 level. That’s hardly much of a retirement plan, unless they lived to be 80 or 90 and just cashed out recently.

Gold is an investment, period. And no matter how gold bugs spin the metal as a hedge against inflation and a sure thing that will only go up, gold can lose its value — sometimes in a hurry, as in the early 1980s.

Jeff Reeves is the editor of InvestorPlace.com . Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/JeffReevesIP

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