For every seller there is a buyer and it’s invariably the smart money that buys what the foolish money sells.

Nothing can evoke human emotions quite like gold, a factor which underpins its role as a store of wealth in the minds of many. Much has been written in response to last month’s sharp price fall; many theorising that it was an orchestrated take down whilst exploring the scenarios that could have inspired such a move.

The drop was indeed savage, but the reaction was equally something to behold, triggering a veritable tidal wave of “physical” buying from around the world; clearly demonstrating that whatever market manoeuvers might take place at lower prices, gold’s universal appeal as a store of wealth is irrefutable.

Often absent from the commentary was any reference to gold’s supply and demand fundamentals; a factor which, regardless of short term price movements, points to sustained and probably significant future price increases.  The populations of India and China account for well over a third of the people on earth. Brookings Institution scholar Homi Kharas estimates the American and European middle classes will shrink over the next 30 years from 50% of the world’s total to 22%.  In contrast, rapid growth in India, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia will, according to the United Nations, move Asia’s share of the middle classes from its current 30% to around 66% by 2030. The significance of these projections should not be discounted.

The game changing and staggering rise of the Asian middle class is set to unleash a rapidly increasing number of eager physical buyers with both an historical and cultural yearning to own gold and the disposable income to buy it.

In view of these fundamentals, we have compiled MiningMaven’s 21 compelling reasons to buy physical gold and miners with gold in the ground, and here they are!

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I have been an aficionado of the stock market for quite some time.  From early dabbling with student monies I managed to generate a fairly chunky return from TSB plc, Northumbrian Water and others I can’t quite recall.  I lost a fair bit too along the way such as on an ill-advised entry into Coloroll in the vein hope of a dead cat bounce - which never arrived.

The excitement and thrill of the whole stock market trading business has, for nearly thirty years, captivated me.  And so much has changed.

In the past, buying my stocks involved lots of paperwork and selling required lots of standing in queues at the Midland Bank at the top of King Street in Manchester, at the special counter reserved for the “dark art” of stock trading, currency and AOB.  Then along came the Share Centre which, like Direct Line for Insurance, seems to make the business of trading far more straightforward.

Then came the internet in the mid to late 1990s and brought ADVFN to my attention just in time for the Dot Com boom.  Of course they should really have called it the Dot Com boom and bust.  In late 1999 and early 2000, as one broker tells me, you went to bed at night knowing that tomorrow you would make money and lots of it.  But that of course all came to a spectacularly well publicised end.

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