Three Gold Investments to Make Today

Dear subscriber,

We've talked about gold for months now. And we're not done.

Today, I want to go a step further and discuss specific gold investments.

Because while true gold bulls may believe in directly owning gold bars or gold coins and keeping them buried in your backyard... there are plenty of great ways to get exposure to the metal.

Longtime Stansberry Research subscribers know we've covered gold for decades.

We've looked at the metal's 3,000-year history as a form of currency. We've discussed what happened when President Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard. We've debated gold versus bitcoin as a store of value. And we've highlighted several different ways to invest in gold.

Right now, a lot of folks are talking about gold hitting $4,000 per ounce.

They speculate the metal's run may be nearing an end.

But we know the biggest gains don't come right after the celebration. They come right before it.

See, gold just pulled back 9% after a 65% run this year. Some of the investing crowd thinks that marks the top. But pullbacks after big runs are normal. They happen in every bull market.

And if it feels risky to buy gold here... again, that's normal.

Investing in any bull market feels uncomfortable, uncertain, and easy to doubt.

But as I said last week, gold still isn't on the average investor's radar. CNBC isn't flashing 24-hour gold tickers. All the gold dealers we talk to tell us that gold sellers still outnumber buyers.

There's no mania... And that's bullish. It means the frenzy isn't here yet.

In this case, it isn't really about numbers. Instead, it's about psychology. In every bull market, there are three emotional phases:

1. Disbelief: when everyone calls the move temporary or just "noise." (This is where the smart money accumulates.)

2. Acceptance: when the public notices.

3. Euphoria: when everyone's excited. (This signals the top.)

Right now, we're still in the disbelief stage.

The smartest investors – central banks, hedge funds, and investors who understand the long-term implications – see the bullish action in gold. And they're loading up quietly.

Meanwhile, novice investors are sitting out, afraid they "missed it."

Every major bull run ends the same way – when disbelief turns into acceptance and eventually euphoria.

Right now, we're nowhere near that.

Retail investors aren't flooding into gold exchange-traded funds ("ETFs"). Nor are people rushing to buy gold coins and bars as investments. The public hasn't arrived – but it will.

And when it does, that's when you'll see parabolic moves – gold rising to $5,000, even $6,000 an ounce.

Put simply, there's still time to take advantage of gold's run. And today, I want to share three quick and easy ways to do so...

The first is the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD).

We've covered GLD many times at Stansberry Research. And if you're a longtime subscriber, you're likely familiar with the ETF.

For those who aren't, GLD is a fund that you can buy quickly in any brokerage account. It gives you perfect exposure to the price of gold. If gold rises, this fund will move in lockstep.

It does that because each share is tied to physical holdings of gold. The fund owns more than 30,000 ounces of actual gold in separate vaults in London, New York, and Zurich, under the protection of HSBC (HSBC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM).

Owning a share of this ETF is like having a little ticket that entitles you to a share of a gold bar deep underground.

And as you can see, GLD has largely followed gold's run this year...

The second option is to invest in a gold miner.

However, gold-mining stocks behave quite differently than gold. Here's why...

Like all stocks, gold miners are priced on how much they earn. And it costs miners to get gold out of the ground. (Mining operations aren't cheap.) The cost varies, but for our purposes, we'll say it's roughly $1,000 per ounce.

After mining costs, miners sell their gold at the prevailing price (which is primarily set by supply and demand).

If mining operations cost $1,000, and gold is at $2,000, then the miner's profit is $1,000.

With gold at $3,000 an ounce, the profit would be $2,000 an ounce. At $4,000, gold-mining companies make $3,000 per ounce.

In other words... when gold's price doubles from $2,000 to $4,000, mining profits triple from $1,000 to $3,000.

This is called "operating leverage" – when prices rise but your costs stay the same – and it means gold-mining stocks make much more dramatic moves than the metal itself.

My favorite gold-mining stock today is Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM).

Agnico is the third-largest producer of gold in the world. It has fantastic mining assets – including the Detour Lake mine and LaRonde complex in Canada and the Fosterville mine in Australia.

The company also has a great, stable management team. (It has only had four CEOs in 60 years.)

Over the past year, Agnico's annual earnings have leapt from $1.3 billion to $2.9 billion – and that's just the start.

Since its all-in costs of gold production are below $1,000 per ounce – with some of its mine sites closer to $600 per ounce – it has a great few years ahead of it as gold continues its run.

Already, AEM is up more than 100% year to date...

Now, mining is difficult. There are lots of regulatory, environmental, and geological hurdles to consider. And it's not cheap, as we've covered.

What if you could find a stock that gets all the benefits of gold production without the headache that comes from building, digging, and transporting?

Even better, what if that company made a ton more money when gold prices were high?

That's what happens with a particular type of gold stock called a gold royalty company.

A gold royalty company doesn't have to buy any land or expensive equipment or hire mining crews. Instead, it provides upfront capital for miners to build or expand a mine in exchange for a percentage of future production revenue (called a "royalty").

It's like venture capital... for gold mining.

And the best gold royalty company right now is Franco-Nevada (FNV).

Franco-Nevada was co-founded by legendary gold investor Pierre Lassonde and Seymour Schulich back in the 1980s.

In 1986, Lassonde invested $2 million of Franco-Nevada's capital in a small mine named Goldstrike (now a world-class asset). It has since paid out more than $1 billion in royalty payments.

That's how well a good royalty deal can work.

Today, Franco-Nevada has stakes in 430 projects. More than 100 of them are producing mines. Others are being developed or are exploration projects with big potential upside.

As all it really does is just sit and own parts of mines, Franco-Nevada has only 40 employees... But it earns more than $1 billion in annual revenue. And since its costs are so low, when the price of gold goes up, its profits explode.

This is one of our favorite, long-held stocks at Stansberry Research. And it has compounded at more than 16% per year since its founding...

Pullbacks in gold like last week's 9% dip are how markets reset – not how they end.

Every gold bull market in history has tested conviction before rewarding patience.

Our first gold investment mentioned, the SPDR Gold Shares, will perfectly track the price of gold. The others will give you even greater upside as gold prices rise.

That combination can help you wisely integrate gold into your portfolio.

What Our Experts Are Reading and Sharing... 

• If you saw my presentation at the Stansberry Conference & Alliance Meeting last week, you already knew this... But Bloomberg is calling aluminum the next gold. It has become the "metal of the moment." And we could be facing a serious shortage of aluminum in the coming year with few easy solutions.

• Amazon (AMZN) obliterated earnings earlier this week. Its massive cloud-computing business grew 20% over last year, bringing in more than $30 billion in sales. That's incredible growth for such a big enterprise. (We bought shares of Amazon below $50 per share in our Retirement Millionaire advisory. It's about to cross $250.)

• Data-center financing is starting to become a debt problem. But Big Tech firms like Meta Platforms (META) don't want to give up their pristine credit ratings. That's why Meta teamed up with private-capital firm Blue Owl to arrange $27.3 billion in "off balance sheet" borrowings.

New Research in The Stansberry Investor Suite...

The investment world isn't sleeping on AI.

Mega-cap tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the technology. And their stocks are soaring.

But some people don't believe AI will work. Others think it will end humanity itself.

Tesla (TSLA) and xAI CEO Elon Musk and Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak have even signed an open letter warning that further AI development risks us losing control of civilization.

Our colleague Dan Ferris has been digging deep into the issue. And today, in a special essay adapted from a recent issue of The Ferris Report, he charts out the historical parallels between AI and previous technological advances.

He admits... there are still a lot of unknowns. But the potential for wealth creation is immense.

According to Dan...

AI is potentially the biggest macro trend we've ever considered. If we see a similar increase in market value to the dot-com boom, the U.S. stock market will be worth $255 trillion by 2032.

Dan shares his foresight in this week's Investor Suite research, which subscribers can access here.

If you don't already subscribe to The Stansberry Investor Suite – and want to learn more about our special package of research – click here.

Until next week,

Matt Weinschenk
Publisher and Director of Research

What do you think about This Week on Wall Street? Send any and all feedback to thisweek@stansberryresearch.com. We read every e-mail you send in.