Hi @cutty,Medicines have an expiry date, gold does not.There are...

Hi @cutty,
Medicines have an expiry date, gold does not.
There are many lines of discussion around gold as an investment. As usual, there is the good, the bad and the ugly. Gold's use as a material is indeed limited and so its historical value as an investment or means of exchange comes to the fore.
Basically, there is a limited amount of gold and it cannot be printed by governments and issued as part of the monetary supply. I have heard claims that all the gold ever mined is still held. Clearly that is an exaggeration because gold can be lost, or buried and forgotten, and so effectively taken out of circulation. Nevertheless, gold is valued highly as it has been throughout history and so protected. The total amount of gold in the world is small in comparison to other metals and compared to the world population. According to the World Gold Council, 190,040 tonnes of gold has been mined throughout history. Approx.69% of gold is tied up in jewellery and private investment.
One reason that people today value gold is because governments cannot create it in the way that they do their fiat currencies and in so doing devalue them. That is why gold is a hedge against inflation. The way world economies are going, we will see more pictures of people taking wheelbarrows of paper money to the grocer (this happened very recently in Zimbabwe and not just Germany in the 1930s). So long as people value gold then it will retain its value. If alchemy became possible at reasonable cost then gold would begin losing its value.
Miners produce gold but the total annual output of 2500 - 3000 tonnes is small in relation to the growing world population.
HC has some good discussions around the value of gold as an investment. Just search on gold and start reading them (as I said you will find good, bad and ugly but the thoughtful commentators usually stand out). You could also look at posts by eshmun for his apocalyptic views on central banks and world money supply today and economic consequences.
If you want exposure to gold, then you can buy physical gold, paper gold or gold miners. Physical gold is either held in a vault like Perth Mint or under your bed; paper gold is by way of shares in a gold ETF; gold miners are explorers, developers or producers. Each has is pluses and minuses.

I continue to track RHC but want to see the follow through impact of COVID-19 lock-downs on world economies because RHC is now a multi-national company. The suspension of elective surgery is clearly a factor that has not yet been quantified and if the world economies go into tailspin then how will that affect the demand for the same, even when once again sanctioned?. However, I have some confidence in gold as an investment at this time of desperate inflation of money supplies.