There are many online articles on how one should invest physical gold and silver, but very few people actually revealed their experiences on the precious metals. So it is refreshing to read Doug Casey’s experience on bullion investments in his book, “Right on the money:  Doug Casey on Economics, Investing, and the Ways of the Real world with Louis James”. The book contains forty interviews Doug had with Louis, touching on topics such as investments, assets, gold, real estate and ethics.

My favorite chapters are from Chapter 9 to 14 under the segment “The Art of Investing”. In these chapters, Doug shared his candid thoughts on physical gold and silver. Interestingly, even though he made his fortune through speculation, he actually advocated investors to avoid trading physical gold. In fact, he urged investors to accumulate it as an asset on a consistent basis. Even though the interviews were held in 2011, I believe his views remained valid today because he was convinced that gold would go higher and that he saw any form of correction as opportunity to buy. He viewed the US government as the greatest danger to Americans today and labelled Bernake “as zero experience in the real world”.

Doug invests only in gold coins and prefers mainly America Eagle. He also collects numismatic coins but he cautioned novice investors not to purchase such coins because coin dealers often charged high premiums if they sensed that the buyers are easy targets.

Perhaps the most disturbing piece of advice from Doug, when probed on how he kept his gold coins, was not to use bank safe deposit boxes. He warned that they are typically not insured and that “the last time the U.S government stole private citizens’ gold. the first thing they did was seal all the bank vaults”. However, from Singapore’s perspective, I don’t envisage this kind of scenario in Singapore because chances of government’s confiscation is negligible. Doug cited Argentina and United Kingdom as poor choices of countries to deposit gold in banks and highlighted Switzerland as good country to store your gold. On how he really store his gold, he did not reveal but suggested average individual to keep their gold in their gardens because home invasions seem likely to become common in the United States.

Doug’s money-making strategy was aligned to mine and validated my views that to become rich, you need to sense market distortions and take advantage of them. Right on the Money is an engaging book illustrating the path from basic ideas to actionable steps that can make a huge difference in one’s finances. I recommend readers who are interested in investing to purchase a copy from Wiley (ISBN 978-1-118-85622-2).