Why investors add
precious metals.
Physical metals sit in a different category to almost everything else a retirement account holds. This page explains what that difference actually is, in plain terms, and where the trade-offs lie.
The case, stated plainly
Most retirement accounts hold one broad category of asset: paper claims. Stocks, bonds, funds and cash are all promises made by somebody — a company, a government, a bank. That is not a criticism; it is simply what they are. Their value depends on the issuer remaining able and willing to honour the claim.
Physical metals are not claims on anyone. A one-ounce coin held in your name at a depository is the asset itself. There is no issuer to fail, no balance sheet behind it and no counterparty to default. That single structural difference is the reason the IRS has permitted physical metals inside a self-directed IRA since 1997, and it is the main reason investors add them.
The four metals are not the same thing
Gold
Gold is primarily a monetary metal. Very little of what has ever been mined is consumed — most of it still exists, held as bars, coins and jewellery. That makes its supply unusually stable and its price driven mainly by demand for the metal as a store of value.
It is the denser, quieter half of a metals allocation: a higher value per ounce, lower storage cost per dollar held, and historically less day-to-day movement than silver.
Silver
Silver has a second life as an industrial material — electronics, solar cells, medical uses. A meaningful share of what is mined each year is consumed rather than stored, which ties part of its demand to industrial activity.
It typically moves more sharply than gold in both directions, and it takes far more physical space for the same dollar value, which means higher storage cost per dollar held. Investors who want more movement, and can tolerate it, hold proportionally more silver.
Platinum
Rarer than gold, with demand driven heavily by industry, and supply concentrated in one country. For most of the 2000s it was priced well above gold; today it is priced well below.
It is a smaller and less liquid market than gold or silver, which can mean wider spreads and more variation in availability.
Palladium
The most industrial of the four, and the most concentrated in supply. Two countries account for roughly three quarters of the world's annual production.
It is the smallest and most volatile of these markets, and its demand is tied more closely to the internal combustion engine than any of the others.
Each metal has its own page, linked from Coins & Bars.
What metals do not do
- They pay you nothing. No dividend, no coupon, no interest. A bar of gold in a vault in ten years is the same bar of gold. Everything you make, or lose, comes from the price.
- They can fall, and stay fallen. Metals have gone through long stretches of flat or declining prices. Anyone telling you otherwise is not being honest with you.
- They cost money to hold. There is a premium over the spot price when you buy, an annual custodian fee and an annual storage and insurance fee. We put all three in writing before you commit to anything.
- They are not a prediction. Nobody at this firm knows where the price of gold is going, and we will not pretend to. What we can tell you is what the asset is and how it behaves structurally.
Who this tends to suit
In our experience the people who are best served by a metals IRA are the ones who already have a funded retirement account, and who want an asset whose value does not depend on anyone else's solvency. If that does not describe your situation, we will say so.
How a transfer or rollover
actually works.
Four steps, and the paperwork is handled for you. Nothing passes through your hands, so it is not a distribution.
Start with a conversation, not a commitment.
Book a call at a time that suits you, or simply pick up the phone. There is no obligation and no follow-up you have not asked for.