so the gold coins i bought in 2002 for $450 bucks that are now worth 1400 bucks each was a bad investment?
does not compute.
No but it wasn't a particularly good investment either. As I said in an earlier post gold is considered a collectible so you'll be paying a larger capital gains tax when you sell it. You also don't get paid any money for holding that gold either like with a dividend stock.
If you want to use 2002 as a starting reference I got plenty of stocks that have killed gold in that time frame. I accumulated some DO back in 2002 in the 20s. In 2006 they started paying a special dividend at $2 a share then it went up to nearly $6/share in 2007 and again in 2008 then fricken $8/share in 2009. This year they finally cut back to half.
Ok, that was a bit lucky but take my largest energy holding CVX which I've held since 1991. Over the long haul 20, 30, 40 years do any comparison and it crushes gold. Not only did the stock appreciate but it pays dividends and those dividends increased every year and I reinvested so I made even more dividends the next time. Chevron represents a productive company, paying people and providing them benefits and spending billions every year on capital expenditures. Gold is a shiny metal that does jack for shit aside from electronics coating and jewelry.
Gold doesn't pay you to hold it(unless you buy the miner stocks and most have lousy dividends) and eventually it corrects in a very big way. It's a horrible long-term investment and to buy it now is pretty risky. I'd much rather buy more CVX, DO and a lot of blue chip dividend stocks that are selling at bargains and swimming in cash like JNJ(also owned since '91), INTC and MSFT. They pay me to hold their stock and keep increasing those divvies every year while gold waits for the inevitable correction.