Why Your Christmas Shopping Spree Should Include Gold

Shop smart, shop, shop, shop... The closer we are to Christmas, the more we’re all pressed to spend money. Even with all the spending, and perhaps because of it, the holiday season is where we see the greatest concentration of anti-consumerist sentiment... Buying things we don't need because Christmas bells are ringing and all that.

But what if buying stuff during Christmas, even in copious amounts, didn't make you a wasteful shopaholic? What if you could instead be part of the happy consumer masses while laying the groundwork for a better future? Enter the Holiday Gold.

Gold is just as easy and attractive to buy as any other Christmas affair

One of gold bullion's primary perks is that it's liquid however you want to slice it. You can buy it easily, capital notwithstanding, sell it even quicker, and store without much issue. The diversity of physical gold options available means that there's a little something for everyone.

Physical gold investors can be a bit split between coin enthusiasts and those who just buy for the metal content. That’s a generalization and collectors can of course dabble in both. Here's the thing, though: even the dullest gold bar makes for a nice Christmas gift, for yourself or your loved ones.

If you don't mind a little premium, top coins such as the American Gold Eagle will definitely go the extra mile. Within the bullion market, you have the option to go on the greatest shopping spree you can think of and not wake up regretting things the next morning or the next year, because gold tends to preserve its value over time, if not increase.

That's more than can be said for most shopping sprees.

A very inflationary Christmas

Just as it did last year, inflation is yet again coming around to ruin everyone's Christmas. There's less money to spend, things are more expensive, all that. And gold is one of the safest ways of beating the currency-eroding Grinch.

Also just as last year, it's a great time to buy gold right now. Inflation has only gone up, and efforts to curb it have done little good and a lot of harm. Does anyone expect things to be different a year from now?

Cross that bridge and all, but wouldn't you like your Christmas spending to be something you'll be proud of a year or even a decade down the line? With terms like "permanent high inflation" being thrown around, gold is emerging as one of the best things you can wrap up to save your wealth.

Gold diversifies against everything

Whatever you heard about stocks and gold developing a correlation is only a philosophical observation. There isn't really any correlation. If gold is going down together with other assets, the reasons behind it are much more complex than them being correlated. And when the unwinding of the supposed correlation invariably happens, we are once again reminded that gold goes where it pleases.

Gold is something you buy to bet against everything else you have, so to speak, and we'll expand on this soon. By holding gold, you've made a bet against stocks, currencies, real estate, whatever. Do we want that bet to pay off? Well...

Gold's countercyclical nature, a.k.a.: "Oh, this thing is still afloat"

We'll let Paul Vanguard say it:

"You know what? I cheer when gold's price goes down – because that usually means everything else has gone up…"

We've actually mentioned this multiple times. Buying gold in 2014 was a good idea, and gold going up wasn't a huge deal in a broad sense. It probably meant central banks bought a lot of tons, or there was a stock market slump, or the U.S. dollar pulled back a little.

These days, when gold goes up in any meaningful way, we know things are getting rough. It's actually worrisome that gold is being subdued, though relatively so with its recent gains, when everyone is talking about…

• The U.S. dollar losing global reserve currency or even dying out
• A global Great Depression scenario
• Persistent inflation and "increased cost of living"
• Everything bubbles
• Dark winters
• Hot summers
• And so on...

We have definitely reached a point where it feels like a lot of things are standing on some kind of edge. And by buying gold, you're cushioning whatever fall might happen, if it does, to the best of your ability. If the thing pulls back from the edge, you haven't lost out on anything, and everyone is happy. Still, as we said, given that we were talking about the same issues last year, it's probably a good idea to be rational with one's optimism.