Customer Reviews

Precious Metals Investing For Dummies

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is one of the best and most complete books on precious metals investing that I've read. It is great for the new investor with little or no knowledge on the subject or the more seasoned investor who has at least some limited experience. It's certainly not for the very experienced investor in precious metals. It's not that advanced. As it says, it's "A reference for the rest of us."

The book covers all sorts of PM investing, including mutual funds, ETFs, options, futures and physical holding. It gives the advantages and disadvantages of each and makes suggestions for several types of investors.

It also talks about the reporting of each type of bullion and touches on the IRS rulings and your responsibility when selling. It talks about the privacy issue and what type of bullion to buy to provide you with the greatest privacy.

There are also a number of wonderful resources listed in several chapters. I found a number of these resources extremely useful.

The author is a professional. He has no vested interest in selling gold or silver or other metals. It also talks to you about selling --- something many books fail to do. The author also discusses technical analysis and other ways to analyze a PM investment.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in investing in precious metals at any level. It talks about all forms of metals, not just gold.

-Susanna K. Hutcheson

This work by Paul Mladjenovic is an excellent contribution to the Dummies series. Rather than trying to entertain the reader which some Dummies authors try to do, the author writes in a serious yet comprehensible style. True to the title, the author gives dozens and dozens of websites helpful in educating oneself and in determining where to invest. The twenty-four chapters, Diversifying with Metals, The Beauty and Benefits of Metals, Discovering the Secret of Silver, Buying Metals Direct, etc. all add another dimension to the world of investing by oneself in precious metals. The work is slow-reading due to all the details but never boring or cumbersome.

If you are just getting into precious metals, then this is the book for you. The first two things this Dummies book covers are the benefits and the risks of precious metals. Then, it covers the basics from investing, speculating, or trading. Mladjenovic's given you tips and hints that will help you understand what to do, even if you don't even know a thing about finance. (Because, I for one hardly knew anything about investing until after I read this book!) Not only does it include the basics on your gold and silver, but it also includes a chapter on uranium and base metals (e.g. copper). Mladjenovic does a great job of telling you how and why the market works. Plus, this book is a good buy anyway since precious metals are always highly valued in the world; they are a finite resource, and they are never worth zero!

I did not read the chapters on mining stocks, futures, and options. They're a bit too risky for me at the moment, but the bullion and the numismatics sections gave excellent examples and covered the basics very well. The main disappointment I had was the chapter on platinum and palladium. Compared to gold, silver, and uranium, there simply was not enough information that covered the basis of both elements. Only a few words on past market performance were mentioned. I was expecting a little more on platinum because it is the rarest metal on Earth. The websites given were also okay --good enough to point you in a certain direction but sometimes too vague.

It's easy to get mixed feelings about this book. It tries to cram everything together, history, categories of precious metals, reasons for booms & busts, strategies for investing, etc. It also tries to simplify and explain things in everyday language - it is a 'dummies' book after all. That's all commendable.

However, somewhere in the process the book became full of errors like "gold is good in times of inflation" or that gold has intrinsic value of so-and-so (it has cultural store of wealth value with mania phases, not intrinsic value beyond it's industrial use), etc.

This wouldn't be so bad if so much of the advice given, like inflation hedging, wasn't so bad, so clearly out of whack with actual historical data from the past 100 years and if the reasoning wasn't so full of gold-bug mythology, a lot of which has been proven wrong by real historians, investors, traders and financial analysts. If the book had more graphs, many of the errors in the argumentation would be visible to even a casual reader. No wonder there are so few graphs.

Gold and precious metals are not a bad investment per se. One just has to understand how they function in different kind of circumstances. This book is not a reliable source to find that out, unless you already know your stuff and find the few gold nuggets from the rest of the mud in the book.

Not recommended, unless one knows the basics and by then it's way too simplistic. Two stars, because it actually also has factually correct information that can be useful (on mining companies for example) and because it reminds people that it's not just a question of "buy & hold and it'll go through the roof forever".

As a better partial alternative, I'd recommend The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing by Katz and Holmes, although it's strictly gold only. Sane, well edited, reasonably argued and full of good advice on actual trading and investing in gold.

If you know squat about precious metal investing, this the book. Written in a clear and concise manner and with a very simple language. Great book!

The book is loaded with good information, but the author's arguements in favor of returning to the Gold Standard does not make sense. The Gold Standard (Having all money backed by and exchangable for Gold)worked fine during the Gold rush era, but the last Gold rush was in the Yukon in 1898. The supply of Gold grew slowly after that and could not keep pace with the demand for money. This caused economic problems. This is a big reason why nations went off the Gold Standard.

Also, people today use credit cards and debit cards and do not use paper money as much as they used to. The United States has been able to get along without printing any paper money larger than $100 since approximately 1948.

Is our current system of using paper money perfect? No it is not. But the Gold Standard had its faults also.

If you dont mind the title of this book. But as I think of it. This title does fit nicely. I am a dummy when it comes to Precious Metals. This book has a lot of very useful information. It also has a wealth of reference links. Very easy to understand. Does not make it tooo boring like some other books that I have read. This book also shows you past history on the performance of the Metals. Wish I knew about investing back in 2000. But don't we all. All I can say is I will be investing for the long term NOW. Great Book. I have picked up more books on this subject.

Author needs to cut the "I" comments that's just extra fluff to an already tiresome 300 pages.

Very little technical, cautions, and tips in each of the chapters to assist readers.

Bibliography? There is no bibliography in the back of the book to help readers continue on in studying precious metals investing. Oh, yeah, forgive the Type II spelling errors "witch" passes computer spell checks (where's the editor?!)-- that "witch" is just an example.

There's nothing in the book that's important about the physical ownership of precious metals such as: assay newly acquired precious metals, transporting it between countries.

Texts mentioned in the book's chapters are commonly used elsewhere by other authors. The writer should mention more advanced titles from his personal library on this subject of investing precious metals .

Links to websites as references is not professional. There has to be actual addresses to specific pages within a website where author pulled his information from.

Overall, the book is terribly vague in discussing precious metals investing-- it's more like a big, fat advertisement (plug!) for his other book on stocks. Skip this one. There is no way the author could have discussed precious metals investing in a single book-- there are too many forms of investing, which he mentions, that deserve books in their own right.

I'm a newbie to precious metal investing so I got this book and it was great. In laymans terms and very informational. It was well worth the money and answered alot of my questions.

Precious metals Investing for Dummies is very informative and helpful, especially for inexperienced precious metals investors. Very easy to understand and comprehend.