Why I Just Bought Gold and Silver Trust Shares to Avoid the Risk of Bank Collapse?
By Health Ranger Report
Here’s what others had to say:
Wasteland Survival Guide
Survival tip of the day children-
After looting the homes of various grinders and acquiring loot from travelers you may find yourself in possession of gold and silver coins during the collapse. Testing them for authenticity is important. (You don’t want to give them to any toughs if they’re fake. Plenty of dumb grinders at the farmers market that you can unload them to.)
One test is the coin flip *ting* sound anyone with a brain can hear.
Another is are they magnetic? Silver actually repels magnets slightly.
If you’ve got a real coin you can also do a
ice melt test. Real silver is highly conductive of heat so it will melt ice really quickly vs a fake.
Making your own fakes is relatively easy and presses are cheap at harbor freight.
Dies can be bought online, but don’t delay. Zinc powder can coat copper which can be acquired by pipes or pennies.
Pro tip- have a kid in your organization pass off the coins to some dumb granny with a cute story. You know, my papa gave me these when I was born but we’re sooooo hungry. You know something the dumb grinders will buy.
See you in the collapse.
Nate
The Sprott trusts (PSLV, PHYS, etc) have double counterparty risk. Your broker (E*Trade, Schwab, etc) owns the trusts. You, the account holder, have a claim against the broker. Sprott holds the metal and the broker has a claim against Sprott. There is also some risk in the US-Canada cross border ownership (what if Fidel Trudeau just seizes Sprott’s gold?) If you think the banking system might collapse, I’m 90% certain the brokers would collapse with them. You could also pretty much count on a very, very, long “market holiday” if the banks collapse. I own both PHYS and PSLV in an employer 401(k) plan that I can’t get out of, but otherwise I wouldn’t. It’s just the least bad choice I have with the unusual circumstances associated with that 401(k).
It’s true that US Treasury bills come in 4, 8, 13, 17, 26, and 52 week maturities (4 being the shortest or roughly a month), but it’s not a problem selling prior to maturity. The treasury market is one of the deepest and most liquid in the world (and getting deeper by the minute :->). If you bought 4 week bills, you could certainly sell some after a week or two or you could borrow against them in a margin account until maturity. That would be in $1000 increments. The easiest way is just to buy a t-bill ETF like SGOV. You can buy or sell SGOV on any trading day in roughly $100 increments. You can also open an account directly with the US Treasury, buy t-bills from the government and hold them there. It boggles my mind the corporate treasurers had vast sums of cash in Silicon Valley Bank versus holding t-bills. My largest bank deposit is in Schwab Bank and it’s well under the $250k FDIC insurance limit. I would never exceed that. Even when I bought my house, I wired the money from several banks in order to stay below that limit. These corporate clowns make $millions/year and they literally know less than I do. Apparently I’m not woke enough.
Mike mentioned volatility, but it’s not a trivial risk. Gold and silver always go up (measured in US dollars) over the long run (because the Federal Reserve debases US dollars constantly), but both can go down a lot in the short term. Consider the period from 2012 to 2016. Gold went down about 40% and it didn’t recover until 2021 (remember, you need a 66% gain to break even after a 40% loss). You don’t want to need your money and end-up selling gold in a brutal down cycle like that. Plan to hold your PSLV/PHYS for a 10 year duration (longer if possible) and put the money you might need for the short-term in SGOV. Yes, losing to inflation sucks because SGOV pays less than inflation, but not as bad as selling gold into a 40% down market. That’s just common sense.
