What the experts say

Faith in gold

Gold still glitters in the eyes of investors, said Jordan Weissmann in TheAtlantic.com. When Gallup asked Americans what they considered the safest asset, 28 percent named gold, 20 percent preferred real estate, and 19 percent chose stocks. So are the gold bugs right? Not surprisingly, it’s a question of timing. If you bought gold in 2000, when it was selling for $277 an ounce, you would have realized a stellar return of 495 percent by selling at today’s price of $1,649. But if you’d bought in 1980, the last time gold prices surged, you would have done better putting your money in an interest-bearing checking account. When real interest rates are low, as they are currently, “investors don’t have much to lose, and possibly a lot to gain, by piling into gold.” But then another question of timing looms: When is it best to sell?

Deals to avoid

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“Anti-counterfeiting crusaders are aiming at a new target: you, the consumer,” said Barbara Thau in DailyFinance.com. The $650 billion global industry in fake goods, from bogus Rolex watches to knockoff Gucci bags, has gained steam as counterfeiters sell more and more online rather than at easily patrolled flea markets and street corners. Now a coalition of manufacturers and their allies is fighting back with a site called DesignsFauxReal.com, where you can see photos of frequently copied merchandise with tongue-in-cheek come-on lines like “Free identity theft with every purchase.” The point of the campaign, says the coalition’s Kristina Montanaro, is to remind browsers that when you buy from a rogue website, “you’re handing your card information over to hardened criminals.”

A simple market approach

You don’t have to be an expert to make money on the stock market, says Scott Cendrowski in Fortune.com, but “you can’t possibly try to play the same game as Wall Street.” Instead of thinking you are gifted enough to time market cycles or outfox “tens of thousands of very smart, very ambitious stock pickers,” you’re better off just focusing on controlling costs. Predictions of future growth may or may not pan out, “but if your mutual fund charges 1.50 percent in expenses, the one thing you can bank on every year is losing 1.50 percent of your money.” Keeping those costs low, staying away from stocks that are overpriced, and investing broadly are “about all the investing secrets there are.”