Here’s your primer for precious-metal gains

Article Excerpt

Investor demand for gold is very strong right now, with consistent buying by central banks as well as exchange-traded funds. Silver has also moved lately, but platinum has lagged. Those last two precious metals have proportionally larger industrial applications than gold (see graph), which strengthens their appeal for investors. While broad industrial demand has helped push up silver prices, electronics manufacturing is still the main driver of demand. The biggest industrial use of platinum, on the other hand, remains catalytic converters. The global slowdown in new vehicle sales has hurt that demand. Given the strong investor interest in gold, we will focus this article on that metal. Gold can offset your stock investments While the price of gold is still well below the record of $1,898 per ounce set in September 2011, it has advanced rapidly over the past few months and is now up by almost 40% since the December 2015 low of $1,050. Over the long run, gold has performed well, gaining 7.8%…