By: Peter J. Cooper

Investors are being won over to the case for precious metals on a daily basis, and the case against this asset class is also weakening by the day. Time then to consider how to gear up to achieve maximum returns in this asset class, albeit with higher risk.

With the UK’s second largest bank, Royal Bank of Scotland predicting a stock market and credit crash within the next three months, it is hardly surprising that the bank’s latest fund for expatriates has a heavy weighting for gold. The ongoing geopolitical tensions between Israel and Iran are also reason enough for nervous investors to seek refuge in this traditional safe haven asset.

Royal Bank of Scotland has given gold a 25 per cent weighting in its latest Autopilot capital guaranteed deposit account targeted at UAE expatriate customers. Performance is weighted equally across four sectors: emerging equities, developed equities, property and gold. The new fund will track performance of the four sectors when rising, and divert to cash when a falling trend is identified, so gold could be its sole investment class.

The role of gold in this new account is bound to raise eyebrows and comes as the bank is warning customers to expect turmoil in equity and credit markets over the next three months, an unusal statement for the second largest UK bank. Time indeed for UAE investors to consider a little diversification into precious metals.

This column has recently presented quite a detailed case for investment in gold and silver both on the grounds of the supply and demand imbalance in the market, and because speculative interest is likely to build in an increasingly inflationary global economic environment.

Buying bullion or coins and storing them is one approach. But what if investors want to gear up to achieve maximum leverage against the price movements that seem highly likely in gold and even more so in silver? (more…)

Gold has surged to yet another all-time high at 976.00 as the dollar continues its slide. Silver set a new 27-year high near $20 and platinum appears poised for a push above $2,200. The metals have gained additional support from strong investor interest and rising oil prices. While gold has retreated on profit taking in more recent trading, focus remains squarely on buying strategies.

The dollar has extended recent losses and the long term downtrend seems to be clearly back underway. The dollar index pushed convincingly below 74.00, on track for a short term test of 72.00. If not for a sharp correction in the high-yielders, we might have attained the latter today.

A new wave of risk aversion and carry trade unwinding knocked high yielding currencies such as the AUD, NZD, NOK, SEK off of their recent highs. This served to underpin the dollar somewhat, but given the generally dismal dollar outlook, the other safe haven currencies (yen and Swiss franc) were the primary beneficiaries. Read Full Story