Royal Bank of Canada (RY)

[LouisDesyjr]

Buying gold bullion / RBCDF only trades a little

I just looked to see what the trading volumes are for RBCDF. It looks like RBCDF only 'trades by appointment'. The bid/ask is showing zero/zero with no shares for sale or wanted. The last trade was 09/15/2015, so it kind of ruins my idea of buying the ADR as insurance against USD hyperinflation. I might have to look at the RY, they list it as 'interexchange' so I am not sure what that means.

There has been a lot of discussion about doing something like that.

The advantage is that gold is 'dense' with lots of value in a small amount of weight or volume. The problem is that there could be a repeat of the 1930s gold laws where they made it illegal to own gold except in small amounts, like a ring. The other problem is what to do when you need to spend some of it. You don't want to have to exchange a 1oz gold coin into USD just to buy some food.

Some people have recommended getting nickels. The metal content is near the face value of 5 cents, and recently the metal content was worth more than the face value. The thinking is that nickels were an almost perfect hedge against inflation or deflation. If there was deflation, the nickel would still be worth five cents and retain its purchasing power as prices declined. If there was inflation or hyperinflation, the metal content in the coins would preserve the purchasing power. Pennies are also in this situation but the problem is that they are only one cent pieces, so you need a lot more of them to have anything worth much. If there is hyperinflation, the higher value coins should start to come into this situation where the face value and the metal content are about equal. Rigth now the higher value coins have metal content that are only at best 50% of the face value and some are as little as 4%. http://www.coinflation.com/
The government makes money on making money with the higher denomination coins.

Louis J. Desy Jr.