/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>50052141
Well of course all assets are speculative to a degree (except cash, which is a guaranteed loss), but surely you have to acknowledge that some are riskier than others, yes? Just looking at a simple price history of gold and silver clearly shows silver to have significantly higher beta than gold does. Whereas gold tends to move in multi-year lurches, it's not uncommon for silver to swing +/-15% in a single month. Now there are plenty of investment theses out there (green tech, silver squeeze, etc.) that purport that silver will buck historical trends and outperform gold even adjusting for beta. I find these theories fairly reasonable, which is why I own as much silver as I do. That being said, this is the very definition of speculation.
Just taking a look at a historical example: if you bought gold at peak hype in 2011, you would have experienced a max drawdown of 44% and would currently be up 4% if you never sold. Conversely, if you did the same with silver, your max drawdown would have been 75% with prices still down 55%. On the contrary, if you bought gold in the 2008 trough, you would have only made 159% (unrealized) gains in 2011, but if you did the same with silver, you would have been up 421%! Like I said, way more speculative.

>>50052526
That was technically an etched coin, not actually minted.