Reverse Gold ETF

  

Categories: Index Funds

See: Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF).

You're long gold. You have 14 pounds of the stuff, courtesy of your loved-but-now-dead-Aunt-Edna who collected it from pawn shops, corpse teeth, and the creek by her house, where the stuff piled up like walnuts in August. You have taken the massive ride in golf from a hundred bucks an ounce to now $1,500 and change. You don't want to sell your gold; too much emotion tied into it, and too many haunty spirits.

You aren't legally qualified to buy put options or short gold, because a) you don't have the financial sophistication to be allowed to short via a brokerage (they'd be sued if you lost money and...lost), and b) you don't have a liquid, tradeable security in gold to short against. The 14 pounds in your closet aren't readily available for Schwab to sell if the trade goes against you.

So your option is to just be long a reverse gold ETF. This just-like-any-other-ETF comprises a series of short positions against gold, so that if the price of gold and/or the miners who mine it go down, you make money, and vice versa. It's not a perfect offset to your long gold 14 pound position, but it'll lock in all of the gains Aunt Edna fought so hard to give you in this life.

Now you just have to worry about estate taxes.

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