Precious Metals Investing For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance)),   ISBN:9780470130872

Customer Rating: 

If you dont mind the title of this book. But as I think of it. This title does fit nicely. I am a dummy when it comes to Precious Metals. This book has a lot of very useful information. It also has a wealth of reference links. Very easy to understand. Does not make it tooo boring like some other books that I have read. This book also shows you past history on the performance of the Metals. Wish I knew about investing back in 2000. But don't we all. All I can say is I will be investing for the long term NOW. Great Book. I have picked up more books on this subject.

Customer Rating: 

It's easy to get mixed feelings about this book. It tries to cram everything together, history, categories of precious metals, reasons for booms & busts, strategies for investing, etc. It also tries to simplify and explain things in everyday language - it is a 'dummies' book after all. That's all commendable.

However, somewhere in the process the book became full of errors like "gold is good in times of inflation" or that gold has intrinsic value of so-and-so (it has cultural store of wealth value with mania phases, not intrinsic value beyond it's industrial use), etc.

This wouldn't be so bad if so much of the advice given, like inflation hedging, wasn't so bad, so clearly out of whack with actual historical data from the past 100 years and if the reasoning wasn't so full of gold-bug mythology, a lot of which has been proven wrong by real historians, investors, traders and financial analysts. If the book had more graphs, many of the errors in the argumentation would be visible to even a casual reader. No wonder there are so few graphs.

Gold and precious metals are not a bad investment per se. One just has to understand how they function in different kind of circumstances. This book is not a reliable source to find that out, unless you already know your stuff and find the few gold nuggets from the rest of the mud in the book.

Not recommended, unless one knows the basics and by then it's way too simplistic. Two stars, because it actually also has factually correct information that can be useful (on mining companies for example) and because it reminds people that it's not just a question of "buy & hold and it'll go through the roof forever".

As a better partial alternative, I'd recommend The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing by Katz and Holmes, although it's strictly gold only. Sane, well edited, reasonably argued and full of good advice on actual trading and investing in gold.

Customer Rating: 

I don't expect much from a "For Dummies" book but this book under delivered. There just wasn't enough content to make me feel like I got my money's worth.

Customer Rating: 

Interesting book. I was thinking of buying gold as an investment and wanted to do some research.

Customer Rating: 

If you are just getting into precious metals, then this is the book for you. The first two things this Dummies book covers are the benefits and the risks of precious metals. Then, it covers the basics from investing, speculating, or trading. Mladjenovic's given you tips and hints that will help you understand what to do, even if you don't even know a thing about finance. (Because, I for one hardly knew anything about investing until after I read this book!) Not only does it include the basics on your gold and silver, but it also includes a chapter on uranium and base metals (e.g. copper). Mladjenovic does a great job of telling you how and why the market works. Plus, this book is a good buy anyway since precious metals are always highly valued in the world; they are a finite resource, and they are never worth zero!

I did not read the chapters on mining stocks, futures, and options. They're a bit too risky for me at the moment, but the bullion and the numismatics sections gave excellent examples and covered the basics very well. The main disappointment I had was the chapter on platinum and palladium. Compared to gold, silver, and uranium, there simply was not enough information that covered the basis of both elements. Only a few words on past market performance were mentioned. I was expecting a little more on platinum because it is the rarest metal on Earth. The websites given were also okay --good enough to point you in a certain direction but sometimes too vague.