Regarding investment, Buffett has a famous saying: "I am also greedy, and I am also afraid, but I am afraid when others are greedy, and greedy when others are afraid." Buffett, as a man with outstanding vision, An investment guru, he is well aware of the "unpopular effect" in investment. Indeed, business opportunities are often hidden in those marginal and forgotten corners. When no one is optimistic about it, it may be quietly gathering strength and converging into a big business opportunity.

For example, gold investment, many people think it is an elusive investment tool.

Because it does not attract as much attention as insurance, nor is it as sought after as stocks, but is hidden in a corner and shines quietly.

Those who pay attention may find that the price of gold has risen from US$260 per ounce at the beginning of this century to US$1,000 per ounce in 2008. What is puzzling is why gold, which has been falling for 20 consecutive years, suddenly rises. Nowadays, countries do not need gold as the basis for issuing banknotes, nor do they need to use so much gold to make jewelry. The price of gold has been soaring. What is the reason behind it? While gold is skyrocketing, many people may be eager to know: Why is gold soaring? Will gold continue to rise? Let’s explore these issues together below.

To understand why the price of gold is rising, we must first figure out what the surge in gold means to China? There has long been a saying in China that "you buy antiques in prosperous times and gold in troubled times." Now it seems that this statement is questionable. Nowadays, the world's antiques are skyrocketing, and gold is also skyrocketing. What is the truth behind this? For this reason, we might as well review the history of gold.

We know that trade began with barter. For example, a load of firewood is exchanged for a pound of rice, and a sheep is exchanged for two pounds of salt. Later, the medium of exchange gradually appeared. At first, people fished out a natural shell from the sea as currency; later they discovered that gold was better: it was small in size and easy to carry, and its texture was uniform and easy to cut, so gold became the medium of exchange.

But the quantity of gold is limited. What if there is not enough gold? Later, people wanted to use a currency symbol to replace real gold, and then currency appeared. Take the U.S. dollar as an example. Every U.S. dollar issued by the U.S. government is backed by gold. In other words, as much banknotes as the government issues, there will be as much gold reserves in the treasury. If you don't believe in the U.S. dollar, you can take the paper money and exchange it for gold. This is the gold standard.

However, after the First World War, gold suffered huge losses. Because there was not so much gold, people had to abandon the gold standard. Later, World War II broke out, and the whole world was in chaos. No one among the governments trusted anyone else's currency. Everyone only wants gold, everyone grabs goods, and no one wants paper money. At that time, the international trade system and monetary system fell into complete chaos under such circumstances, and normal trade between countries had stopped.

After World War II, the gold reserves of various countries were almost exhausted, and it was obviously impossible to return to the gold standard era. After much deliberation, people finally formulated such a plan: that is, each country's currency is pegged to the US dollar, and the US dollar is pegged to gold. Then a fixed ratio is worked out, such as how many pounds are worth the U.S. dollar, and each country's currency has a fixed exchange rate with the U.S. dollar.

After that, the United States encountered several crises. When countries saw that the U.S. economy was in trouble, no one recognized the U.S. dollar and demanded that the U.S. dollar be exchanged for gold. As a result, the U.S. dollar depreciated unprecedentedly. The U.S. dollar will remain floating for a long time to come. The United States could not afford so much gold, so it had no choice but to decouple the U.S. dollar from gold.

So from then on, the world's exchange rates began to fluctuate for a long time. The currencies of various countries are no longer linked to the U.S. dollar. The result can only be that the U.S. dollar will rise if it wants to rise, and fall if it wants to fall. The U.S. dollar is also not linked to gold. Gold will rise if it wants to rise, and fall if it wants to fall. Because of this, gold withdrew from its historical status, and countries could no longer exchange U.S. dollars for gold at a fixed ratio without limit. After that, the price of gold experienced several major ups and downs.

In 1980, the war between Iraq and Iran, supported by the United States, broke out. As the war increased social instability, the price of gold also began to rise. The price of gold rushed to more than 800 US dollars at that time. After the Iran-Iraq war ended, gold prices plummeted. By 1999, at the turn of the old and new centuries, a "millennium bug" problem appeared in the world. The "Millennium Bug" appeared with the emergence of computers. Due to the high cost of memory, the year set when the computer was first invented was represented by only two fields. For example, in 1999, the computer only recognized 99 digits. It is impossible to tell whether it is 1999 or 2099, and once it reaches 2000, the computer system date is very likely to automatically reset to zero. If this is the case, some loans starting from 1900 may have to be repaid. Also, if the individual The principal of bank deposits is likely to automatically return to zero, which will cause people to suffer huge losses. For this reason, people all think of gold that can preserve its value. So gold skyrocketed overnight.

It later turned out that Y2K was a false alarm, and the price of gold plummeted again.

Through the above statement, it is not difficult to find that every surge in gold prices is closely linked to the security of the world's economy and politics. And whenever the world's political and economic landscape is in turmoil, people will think of gold's value-preserving function, and the price of gold will skyrocket.

And whenever society is unstable, countries will inevitably experience inflation. One of the characteristics of inflation is the depreciation of paper currency, but the price of gold will not depreciate with the depreciation of paper money. So many investors began to take advantage of this rule. In their view, the more unstable the period, the greater the value-preserving role of gold. When you buy when the price of gold is at a low point and sell it after it rises sharply, you can imagine the price difference in between.

However, the prerequisite for investing in gold is that you must have a forward-looking vision, conduct precise analysis, and predict changes in the world economic structure within a certain period of time, such as wars between countries, financial crises, and disaster panics. etc.