■ What is the value of gold investment?
The investment value of gold is mainly reflected in four aspects: long-term storage of value; Final assets, high liquidity and asset diversification. Gold investment is usually regarded as a hedge against inflation and exchange rate fluctuations. According to a story of the International Gold Council, the value of men's suits in henry vii, England in the 6th century was about 1 ounce of gold, which is roughly equivalent to the current suit price. For central banks and some international institutions, gold is their last resort. For investors who need to realize cash, gold can provide high liquidity, just as fast as stock and bond trading. For asset managers, investing in gold can effectively diversify the portfolio, because the price of gold and the prices of stocks, bonds and other financial assets show a weak reverse trend in the long run, for example, from 199 1 to 1 in 2000, and the negative correlation coefficient between gold and the S&P 500 index, long-term US treasury bonds, financial bills and real estate is-. Visible bear market should buy gold.
■ How many gold investment tools are there?
At present, there are many gold investment tools in the gold market, such as gold spot, gold futures, gold options, gold swaps, gold leveraged contracts, gold certificates, gold depositary receipts and so on.
The main forms of physical gold in the gold spot market are gold bars and ingots, as well as gold coins, gold medals and jewelry. Gold bars include low-purity placer gold and high-purity strip gold, and generally weigh 400 ounces. Market participants mainly include gold producers, refiners, central banks, investors and other demand sides, among which gold traders buy and sell in the market and banks finance them. The spot price difference of gold is generally 0.5- 1 USD per ounce. For example, the New York gold market closed at $ 297.50/8.00 on Friday, and closed at $ 299.00/300.00 the day before. The ounce is the unit of measurement, and 1 ounce is equivalent to 31.1035g.
Gold option trading means that the option buyer has the right to buy and sell gold spot or futures at the agreed price after paying the option fee, which is divided into call option and put option.
Gold swap transaction is that gold holders exchange gold bars for money, and when the expiration agreement expires, they buy back gold bars at the agreed forward price. It is said that the central banks of South Africa and the former Soviet Union all prefer this trading method. Recently, the gold reserves in the euro zone rose by 654.38+003 billion euros, because the gold swap contracts of countries in the region expired.
On the basis of these gold trading tools, many gold investment tools have been derived. In fact, investors can also buy and sell shares of gold companies in the stock market and indirectly invest in gold. Hathaway, the investment manager of Tocqueville, an American gold fund, is keen on investing in gold stocks. He founded the fund on June 1998. At that time, technology stocks were the "overlord" in the market, while gold stocks were regarded as "untouchables" and were the least optimistic. However, after the fund opened its position, it achieved quite strong performance, with the rate of return rising from 5% in 1998 to 2 1.3% at the end of 200 1 and even reaching 28.34% recently. Historically, precious metal stocks have always been a safe haven for investors in uncertain times. The recession of American economy is the most uncertain period. First, the technology bubble burst, then the "9 1 1" incident, the financial crisis in Argentina, and finally the bad influence of the "Enron incident". Therefore, gold stocks naturally become investment choices. In fact, during the bear markets of 1973 and 1974, gold stocks performed well and lasted for ten years. Another American gold fund, First Eagle, with assets of about17.7 million US dollars, also achieved a high yield of 37.3% in 2006, 5438+0. Since the beginning of this year, the yield has reached about 28.5%, and the yield of 1 as of March 7 is as high as 52. 14%!
■ Where can I see the gold market?
Official holders of most countries and regions and international financial institutions deposit gold in the United States, of which more than 65,438+100,000 tons are deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank of new york. The storage place is a huge underground gold maze, in which gold warehouses of various countries or institutions are scattered all over the place, but see the Golden Mountain Tower, resplendent and magnificent. When gold needs to be delivered after the transaction, porters move huge gold bars or nuggets from the seller's warehouse to the buyer's warehouse. Because of the huge transaction volume, they move around every day according to the transaction demand, and they are really people who move Jinshan.
Because of its neutral position and special banking system, Switzerland has created a free and confidential environment for gold trading, so it has become the world's largest gold transit station and a newly-built private gold storage center. Zurich Golden Pool consists of First Boston Bank (CSFB) and UBS Group AG. It is not under the jurisdiction of the government and does not implement the deposit system.
London is an established gold market, which consists of five traditional gold banks. The price of gold is fixed, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The fixed price of London gold is almost the benchmark price of the world gold market. London's gold trading scale ranks first in the world.
The gold market in New York developed after 1975 abolished the gold control. With new york becoming the fourth largest gold processing center in the world, the New York gold market has become a link between gold producers and processors. Among them, gold bars often weigh 400 ounces or 100 ounces.
The Hong Kong gold market opened on 19 10. It is currently the main gold distribution center and settlement center in the Far East, connecting the New York gold market with the European gold market. Singapore's gold market was founded in 1969, and rose due to the re-export conditions.
The gold futures markets mainly include COMEX and TOCOM, and the commodity exchanges in S? o Paulo, Chicago and Central America are also quite large.
With the establishment of Shanghai Gold Exchange, China's gold market, money market, securities market and foreign exchange market have formed a complete financial market system in China.