If you were to find a lost treasure full of gold and jewels then you would feel very rich, especially since the price of gold is on the rise. Gold is a hard investment to make not only because it takes a lot of money to invest in the first place but also because it is a volatile investment yet it is a hedge against the inflation rate. You can buy gold today then tomorrow it can be down a few dollars or a hundred dollars and people do not like those odds.
Yet even though the odds are scary when investing in gold especially many people will still take the chance, they sometimes make money and sometimes lose money. Recently a new law has been pasted on how much debt you can go in legally to invest in gold and this has made gold go down a little. Basically the people who went into debt buying gold because its price was increasing now have had to sell it back thus dropping the price and causing other people to panic.
When people panic the situation becomes a lot more volatile and the price of gold will drop a little more, so the people who went into debt buying gold lost a little money when they had to sell it back. Owning gold does not always have to be for profits and typically is not because it can lose value or gain value so quickly. The point of owning actual gold is typically for security and as a hedge against inflation.
Inflation is very prominent in paper currencies because it can be reproduced at any time if the government wants to do so. But gold can not be reproduced by man and thus it does not suffer from inflation and when paper currency was backed by gold the inflation rate did not rise very much. Inflation could still happen because when the price of goods go up it is a form of inflation, but it would not be as bad as it is when new amounts of money are printed.
Most people know or have found out that to invest in gold by buying it and owning it is not for profits but for security and most people would do good to remember this. Not to say that you can not make money from buying gold this way but it is a little risky and in today’s economy most people can not take any risks.