Inside Scoop On Gold Storage Offshore and On
Interview With Ed D’Agostino, General Manager of Hard Assets Alliance
My interview with Ed D’Agostino of Hard Assets Alliance was not only enjoyable but quite revealing about what others are doing with regard to buying Gold, Silver, PGM’s – what form they prefer and where they prefer to store it.
One of my primary goals was to learn what trends he is seeing with regard to customers preferences and he revealed a couple of real surprises.
I also was quite curious to learn WHICH metals, Gold, Silver, Platinum or Palladium were most popular and, again, if there were trends he was seeing. We even spend a few minutes discussing the Gold CombiBar that HAA just recently started to offer.
Hard Assets Alliance (our full review here) has a lot of “smart money” customers so it’s quite instructive to know what those people are doing with their precious metals portion of their wealth.
The interview lasts over 30 minutes, and for those who want to search or skim I hope to have a transcript up at the end of this post soon.
The video format of my interview with Ed has some helpful text here and there, but I also included just the audio MP3 of the interview if you want to download for listening to in the car, on the exercise equipment or otherwise on the go.
Critical Time To Make A Decision On Buying And Storing Gold
We have just come off of the Summer Doldrums for 2013, a historical time of weakness and what appears – again – to have been an exceptional entry point for buying Gold and Silver.
But it’s not over.
The experts we follow still see a tremendous upside for the precious metals but you need to be deciding NOW what you will buy and where you will store it. Will you buy Gold, Gold & Silver, just Silver? Should you buy Platinum and Palladium? Maybe learning what others are doing will help you decide (in addition to your own financial advisor!).
If the many experts are correct, the Fall of 2013 could see some real fireworks that leads to a time when we may never see Gold & Silver this cheap again.
As Simon Black just wrote this weekend, governments are desperate and, to use their OWN words: “When things get really bad you just have to lie”. Any fairly informed and intelligent person can easily see through the lies of governments around the world.
Real ownership of physical, allocated precious metals (primarily Gold & Silver) might just be the best way to weather the storms coming. That’s what we believe and are putting our money where our mouth is (or maybe, where our keyboard is?)
Get Started Now With Hard Assets Alliance Links
I know some of you are impatient, so here are the links to get started while you listen to the interview (yep, I multi-task too and understand that your time is valuable).
Open An Account With Hard Assets Alliance Online
Download the SmartMetals(tm) Action Kit
Watch / Listen To My Interview With Ed D’Agostino Of Hard Assets Alliance
Important Reminder: Nothing said/shown on these recordings constitutes investment or tax advice. Consult your own appropriate professional advisor!
Video version of interview
Audio version of interview
This MP3 file is the audio only, remember the disclaimer above!
MP3 file of Hard Assets Alliance Interview
Here are those links again
Learn more or start now getting setup with Hard Assets Alliance; we are very happy customers and think you will be too.
Open An Account With Hard Assets Alliance Online
Download the SmartMetals(tm) Action Kit
Transcript of The Video / Audio Interview
Roger: Hello everyone, and welcome to another BuyAndStoreGold.com interview with a Precious Metals industry professional.
I’m Roger Bond and today we have as our guest Mr. Ed D’Agostino, he is the General Manager of Hard Assets Alliance, a relatively new company for buying physical Gold, Silver, Platinum & Palladium that can be delivered to you or stored in one of their secure vault locations around the globe.
We personally opened several accounts at Hard Assets Alliance right away when they opened and have been VERY pleased with everything about the service ever since.
Ed: Oh Sure, and thanks for having me.
So basically with Hard Assets Alliance our goal is to bring investors the convenience and the liquidity of an ETF but at the same time give them the security and peace of mind that comes from owning physical precious metal. So what I mean by that is when we were starting Hard Assets Alliance we surveyed everything that was out there for products and services and just picked out the best things we liked. And what liked best about an ETF was the ease of trading and the liquidity; what we didn’t like is the lack of the physical aspect to holding your Gold or Silver.
Conversely, dealers offer Gold and Silver they can ship to your door and in some instances that’s great and we actually offer that service but, you’re limited in how much you can have on hand or how much is prudent to have on hand and then you need to start thinking about off site storage; and that’s where we really feel like there was a void in the market. So we try to combine the best aspects of all the different services out there into one and that’s how we arrived at the Alliance.
So in a nutshell we have an online trading platform that would feel very comfortable to anyone who has an online brokerage account. So you can open an account, fund your account just like you would, say, an E-trade, and then you can – instead of buying stocks – you can buy physical precious metal and you can buy that for delivery or buy that for storage in one of our U.S. or international storage vaults. And you can sell that metal back to our network of wholesale dealers and LBMA listed refiners whenever you want, so there’s your liquidity piece; or, you can take delivery – say you want to have your metals in storage and 6 months later you decide you want some of it delivered. You just get online, choose “x” number of bars or coins, click deliver and they are on there way to you.
Roger: Well I think you have really hit a sweet spot with the investors out there based on the popularity of what we have seen so far, there really was I think a void and it seems like you’ve done a great job of filling it; then just kind of increasing your offerings ever since you started the service.
One of the things I’d like to discuss is the advantage of HAA being US based, you touched on it just a little bit, but, for me this means you’re a little bit easier to trust and maybe this is kind of an American thing where we trust our own country a little bit more, I understand that Europeans and things don’t have that big of barrier. But you also have convenient hours it’s not like trying to get a hold of London at a 7 hour time shift or worse if you live on the West coast. and you have real English speaking representatives who I’ve talked to several times by phone and they are very pleasant to deal with.
E. Absolutely, the big reason for being US based is exactly that. We can offer investors a US account; for non US individuals that’s actually become quite intriguing so we’re starting to see a big influx of non-U.S. account holders because they want to have a account that’s not in their own backyard. For US account holders there’s several realities that they have to deal with, particularly when they look at getting assets outside of the U.S.
On face value, getting your assets outside of the US that’s a great idea and that’s why we offer international storage, it’s the way that you do it is, there is some nuance there and really it comes down to personal preference. You have a couple of choices. You can setup a US account to hold your assets overseas and that’s what the Hard Assets Alliance offers, so you have a US controlled account that maybe has Gold for storage in Zurich or Singapore, two of our more popular overseas locations.
So what does that mean, it means you don’t have to deal with reporting a foreign account or foreign holdings because technically those are US holdings. And yet your metal is still outside of the US, you can take delivery of it whenever you want wherever you want. So, I look at that as a nice blend, others may say no I want my metal to be completely outside of the US and that’s fine, but, you have to declare that, you have to report that and the reality – is if you’re thinking that you can be sort of be below the radar and move assets out of the country, I think anyone who’s been watching over the last couple of years knows that is becoming more and more a fairy tale.
Roger: Not only a fairy tale, but even kind of dangerous if they end up getting your name from that Swiss Banker or from that German programmer who stole a CD or whatever it might be.
Ed: Absolutely and we, we do NOT at ALL advocate nor do we want to try to help anyone evade US reporting requirements. We don’t encourage that and we don’t have any part in it, but at the same time we acknowledge that every individual has individual needs. They may have a house overseas, or travel abroad frequently and want to have easy access to some of their assets while they are abroad, that’s a perfectly legitimate reason to have metals stored overseas so we try to make it as easy as we can.
Roger: Well and in our case we even have some relatives here that it was a little bit of a step for them even to embrace the idea of Gold ownership in the first place, especially when they are being bombarded with the popular story that it’s a relic and so forth, but to get them to actually open an overseas account was just a step they weren’t willing to take, and when Hard Assets Alliance came around I thought, hey, this is perfect, it’s exactly what they are looking for.
Ed: Sure and those are exactly the type of people that I hope to reach more of, and, shows like yours do a great job of helping us with that. I think it’s really important that for your main stream investors start to become more comfortable with precious metals as an asset class. Everyone’s got a certain level of comfort and a certain and a certain philosophical bend I guess you would say as to how they want to invest and we do have customers who are self described as “all in” that is all that they invest in. And we love those customers obviously they are some of our biggest and best customers, but then I speak to others like you referenced who, just don’t get it. Don’t understand precious metal at all and it’s it can be a hard concept to grasp but when you look at history it’s irrefutable that Silver and Gold for thousands and thousands of years are the only lasting form of currency that the world has ever seen. And, I think it would be hard for anyone who gets a little bit educated to come to any other conclusion than “gee, I really should have some allocation to precious metals in my portfolio, just like other asset classes”.
Roger: Well it’s kind of surprising that people don’t start to see the light when it’s always big news when some English farmer plows his field and turns up a few coins or a sea-based recovery firm go after these sunken treasure in these ships it’s always just a big news item, that people still aren’t putting two and two together, a lot of them.
Ed: Sure, Well and it’s not the party line it’s not what Central Banks are going to get on mainstream media and tell the general populace to buy Gold because it’s not in their best interest, though ironically Central Banks over the last several years have been the biggest buyers of Gold in the World, so watch what they do, not what they say.
Roger: One of the perhaps, small, disadvantages of HAA being US based is that you do issue 1099’s. Now, just a question here, do you issue 1099’s for ALL sales or just for those where it’s actually required, either because of a dollar value or certain number of ounces of a type of metal, and I don’t think people ask this because they necessarily want to cheat on their taxes, I think most think of it more from a privacy end of it. But could you comment on that just briefly?
Ed: Sure, so what we do is once a year, it’s the end of January, we issue 1099’s for the prior year. And we only issue those 1099’s for metal that you have sold. So, if you as an individual – or an entity- any customer who buys precious metal through the hard assets alliance and puts it into storage and subsequently sells some or all of it, we will issue you a 1099 on the portion that you sold.
Roger: And never on just a delivery, a delivery is totally irrelevant, is that correct?
Ed: That’s correct. And obviously with an IRA there’s a different set of reporting that happens essentially once a year we issue through Entrust, our IRA partner, we issue a distribution statement at the end of each year. Just like any other IRA, you take money out, or if you take metal out, that is considered a distribution and that’s reportable.
Roger: Sure, Sure. Now what type of trends are you seeing in the type of metals that customers are buying. Are you seeing any shifts between, you know, Silver vs Gold, or maybe customers starting to go after those PGM’s (Platinum & Palladium).
Ed: Seeing two shifts right now. Seeing more Silver, a bigger allocation to Silver vs Gold; and I’m seeing a move more toward bars than coins. So we still sell more coins in the one ounce denomination than bars, but bars are climbing up, particularly on the Gold side, and I think that that is wise. So long as you leave your Gold bar in the wrapper, it is not going to be challenged if you take delivery and then later on want to sell it. So I always encourage that take delivery leave it in the packaging. I know it’s tempting to take it out but leave it in. Gold and Silver, they’re beautiful metals, I have a few Silver coins on my desk that I just took delivery of yesterday and they’re spectacular looking so it’s hard not to do that, but leave it in the packaging. With bars you are going to pay a lower premium because you are not going to pay someone as much to mint that bar as you do a coin, so, you’re paying closer to pure metal cost when you buy a bar as opposed to a coin.
Roger: And of course what you are referring to is avoiding any assay on sale, we personally have seen more the 10 ounce bars start to get used, with the people we work with, for that very reason. If you are going to deploy that kind of cash and as Gold came down that was easier to do and as you say you are getting more Gold for your money.
Ed: That’s absolutely right, and we’ve seen an uptick in Kilogram bars as well. That’s obviously a special class of individual from a net worth perspective that is going to invest in KG bars where you’re looking at $50,000 – $55,000 per bar, so it’s not everyone who can do that; but for those that can I have seen a shift.. the people who used to buy 10 one – ounce bars are now buying 1 ten ounce bar. the people who used to accumulate 10 ounce bars are not buying KG bars – so everyone seems to be stepping up; which, makes sense, because you pay less per ounce by doing that.
Roger: And the only disadvantage to doing that would be is if you wanted to sell, say, half your holdings, but again as long as you can afford two bars you can always do that anyway, so, but like you say , the larger the better.
Ed: that’ right.
Roger: Now, I feel like I personally know the answer to this next question but I think a lot of folks out there would like to hear it. and that is, are all the vaults that you offer equally safe & secure.
Ed: They are. And I’m glad you asked me that. When we first launched our vaulting partners asked us not to use there names and that was really, ah, really an obstacle for me, how can I get people to trust our vaulting when we are just launching our company when we can’t use your names. But they were concerned about marketing and using their names for marketing purposes, so, we’ve gone through long, long discussions with many of them to get them to understand that we’re not trying to trade on their name but at the same time our customers deserve to know who is storing their metal. So I am pleased to now be able to officially say that we use the three largest non-bank vaulters in the world.
And that’s Brinks, Malca Amit, and VIA MAT, so those are names that most of your listeners are going to be familiar with. Brinks runs the vaults in New York City, Salt Lake City and Melbourne, Australia and then Malca Amit is in Singapore and VIA MAT is other locations, so Zurich and London.
Roger: Yeah, and I think that Malca Amit would be the only one that most everyone hasn’t at least heard of. Certainly people in the industry have total confidence in them as well.
Ed: That’s correct. Yes, I would agree with that.
Roger: Now what are you seeing as your customers favorite vault location; do you see any trends here and obviously you are adding some new vault locations for a reason, so, what can you tell us about that?
Ed: Very clear trends there. In the US, Salt Lake City is almost 2 to 1 the favorite vault.
Roger: Really?
Ed: Yeah, which I found sort of surprising, at first. I think it has to do with a few things. I’ve asked lots of our customers when I’m on the phone with them with them “Why Salt Lake City” as opposed to New York. Some it’s just an ingrained bias against anything that even sounds like Wall Street – and I get that. So, that’s.. others, want to be West of the Mississippi, I think maybe because they’re West of the Mississippi. Utah is a very pro-precious metals state, very friendly, in fact Utah is one of the two states that has been trying to get precious metals accepted in the state as legal tender.
And, I think the hurricane, hurricane Sandy that came through last year really put a scare into people because I did see some holdings shift out of New York and over to Salt Lake. So that’s the U.S.
Overseas, we added Singapore about 4 or 5 months ago now. It is by far the #1 overseas destination for new purchases. I would say 75% of metals purchased for overseas storage are going to Singapore at this point.
Roger: Wow!
Ed: Really remarkable. Before Singapore came online it was Zurich. Since Singapore has come online Zurich is still #2 but Singapore is just dominating.
Roger: Not that I think it necessarily matters, but there has been a lot of negative press about Switzerland and some of the things they have been doing about private banking or banking in general and that may have some affect on it. If you read the right kind of press a lot of emphasis on going over to the East and getting into Singapore and those type of areas because that’s where, where “the shift” is going, so people were probably very glad to see that when you opened that up.
Ed: Absolutely. And you’re right, Singapore market is very strong as is the entire Asian market so it does make sense to have a chunk of your holdings in a market where there is high demand levels.
Roger: And where they understand the metal besides.
Ed: Exactly.
Roger: A question we get all the time and originally the answer was “not yet” and that is, can I send you my Krugerrands, Eagles or bars that I already own and have you store that for me. Now maybe I’m getting nervous having this stuff in the bank, around the house or even buried in the backyard.
Ed: Sure, sure. And for good reason. You know, metals, outside of the obvious – theft – metals, they can melt so that’s an issue, storing them in a bank what happens if the bank closes and you’ve got them in a safe deposit box, so, there’s lots of reasons why you should be concerned about storing them, sort of, in close proximity. I wish I had a better answer for you today, it’s still a “we’re working on it”, we can do it for – we’ve done it for some people frankly it’s been fairly large holdings, the limitations are it needs to be above a couple hundred thousand dollars in value, and it needs to be, the metals need to be essentially in mint quality, and need to be metals that we sell. So, essentially, bullion.
Roger: Sure. So if I’ve got a Mexican Gold coin, that you don’t sell, not going to happen.
Ed: Right, I can’t help you. I would glad on a one off basis to steer you in a direction, through Hard Assets Alliance I can’t help you. We are actively working on a service through Brinks where you would be able to ship smaller quantities and they would actually open the package, under camera, inspect the package, assay if necessary, and then put the metals into storage. We’re 2 to 3 months away from that, we’re trying to, what we’re really trying to do is gauge interest and demand. So, if you receive any feedback on your end, I’d love to hear about that.
Roger: We sure will. You did recently add the Gold CombiBar from Valcambi Suisse and I’m seeing it’s pretty popular already. Do you think it’s a product with universal appeal or is it just kind of a “prepper” product?
Ed: Ok, that’s a good question. You know I don’t think it’s a “prepper” product, I really like the CombiBar. In addition to the way it looks, it’s essentially for those who don’t know, a CombiBar is a 50 gram bar, which equates to about 1.6 troy ounces, and this 50 gram bar is shaped essentially like a credit card so it’s very discreet, put it in your wallet. But, the bar is scored into a 5 x 10 grid. So, the holder can break off a strip of say 5 grams and then can even break that 5 gram strip off into individual 1 gram pieces.
And each piece is labeled .9999 pure Gold, which is the same purity as your standard bullion coin or LBMA good delivery bar. And what you have is, when you break off a 1 gram piece you have a piece that’s worth $45 – $50 depending on where the market’s at. It’s a usable, tradable piece of Gold in a size that is reasonable. I mean if you walk into a, for whatever reason you want to barter a coin, say, we’ll you got a coin in your hand that’s worth $1400, $1500 it’s hard to go buy a tank of gas with a coin. Right, so.
Roger: Absolutely. And it might be a little bit more of a trust issue, too. I mean, I’m more willing to trust that a $50 piece of Gold is fake than that a $1500 piece of Gold is fake.
Ed: Certainly you’d be looking at it more closely I think.
Roger: What chance do you see for the kind of societal breakdown where a CombiBar would come in handy, and I’m sure it varies from country to country. You guys have got a pretty good exposure to what’s happening and I guess we don’t even have to mention Syria. Just in your own mind, personal opinion, what do you think might be the likelihood we would be seeing that actually come to use the way they intended?
Ed: I think there’s a couple of scenarios where it could come into play. One is, for trade among like minded people. I think it’s perfect. So if you are in an area such as a Utah or Arizona, where precious metal is on the verge or in some of those areas, already is, acceptable legal tender. Well, the CombiBar gives you a usable denomination to effect your trade in. So, that could happen now.
And I suspect it is happening now. The other scenario and I was just interviewed by a large mainstream media outlet and they asked me the same question. Discount total financial collapse, what scenario could you really see playing out over a year or so. And my answer was, I was stuck on the interstate in Connecticut when we had the blackout of 2003 and the power grid went down across the Eastern seaboard and the Midwest. People were stuck.
Gas stations didn’t work, ATM’s didn’t work, if you had 5 bucks in your pocket you had make that 5 bucks stretch, right? So that lasted, I think a little over a day in the area that I was in I know it lasted longer in other places and less time in still others. But, think about a situation like that where, what if it lasted – a week? Or what if a hurricane came through and knocked out power for a week or so.
Gas pumps still won’t work, ATM’s aren’t going to work so whatever cash you have – that’s going to go quickly – then what do you fall back on? I would argue that Silver coins or something like a CombiBar could be great to have on hand in an instance like that.
Roger: Well, I think so too. And I fall victim to the very first comment you made about it where – it’s just kind of cool! Do you think you will be offering the Silver CombiBar or Platinum or Palladium soon.
Ed: I can see offering the Platinum bar at some point, I’m not sure about the others. The reason I really like the 50 gram Gold CombiBar is that it just felt like it was the right size and the right shape for the right metal. I mean, Platinum is a little bit more esoteric on the, and certainly Palladium on the investor scale, and we sell about 70% Gold, 25% Silver, and then the rest, fractions, remainders are Platinum and Palladium.
Roger: Sure.
Ed: A Silver coin is still a reasonably usable size, you somewhere around 25 bucks right now. That feels like an OK size, so I don’t know that the need is there for the Silver CombiBar so much as the Gold. I think the Gold CombiBar really fits a niche, admittedly, but one that is underserved.
Roger: I think you’re right. And if there was a lot of demand for it I’m sure we’d have a supply problem.
Ed: I think you’re right. Thankfully Valcambi is, they’ve been great to work with. Valcambi Suisse is a well known, well recognized LBMA refiner in Switzerland and really have their act together and have done a great job of supporting the product so we haven’t had any supply issues yet. And we’ve sold several hundred just in the week or so we’ve made it available so far.
Roger: That doesn’t surprise me. What improvements to your service are you currently working on, that you can tell us about, and that you haven’t already mentioned?
Ed: We’re working on improving our site for mobile use. What we’ve known for some time now is that more and more commerce is happening over not just the internet but mobile devices. So, I think we’re at the point now that E-commerce in general is approaching 50% mobile and that’s only going to continue. So, tablets, widescreen phones, that’s where commerce is going so we are working on improving our mobile capacity for our website. We did just recently overhaul our website so it’s much more user friendly now and we added several new charting features so you can go in and pick any metal that we’ve discussed and, essentially any currency and get history of prices right through from 24 hour prices right back to as far as history will go.
So those are things that we’ve recently done. As far as our service goes, we are very close, and when I say very close a matter of weeks away from rolling out an automatic investment plan that we’re calling the MetalStream program. The MetalStream program, it does a couple of nice things, it allows you to dollar cost average into a position and it allows you to lower the minimums that you would need to invest through us.
So you can take full advantage of our program, our platform and our pricing but you don’t need to worry about that $5000 minimum that we’ve had for a while now. So how it works is you can allocate funds to be transferred by ACH into your Hard Assets Alliance account on a monthly basis, it could be as low as $250 a month and when we receive that money we will, once a month, will take all the funds that come in and we will allocate those funds to a metal purchase; so say it’s one ounce Gold bars. We will take everyone’s funds and we will buy that exact amount of Gold bars for that month and now your deposit is now backed by Gold.
But here’s where we’re different. There are several programs like that out there but none of them offer you affordable convertibility. So what we do is when you get to the point where you’ve reached one bar, or two bars or however many you want, you can go into your account and you can opt to have that converted to a whole bar, in your name. So it moves from being essentially a fractional pool program to being fully allocated. So you have bar that becomes yours it shows up in your account, you can place it into storage or you can take delivery of it. For no fee.
We’re really excited about that it gets rid of the fairly high minimum requirement that we have to have in order to satisfy the dealer network. So it really takes another step towards democratizing precious metal ownership for the individual investor.
I’m excited about that program, I’m going to use it.
Roger: Well are you ready for an onslaught of new business?
Ed: We are! Absolutely.
Roger: I think it’s going to be popular.
Ed: I hope so, I hope so. I think it will. It’s just like our system to begin with, it’s the only one of its kind. This system is going to be wholly unique. It just goes back to our core belief that we really feel like it’s important that individuals that are investing in precious metal make sure that they get some exposure to the actual, physical, tangible metal and be able to hold it in their hand; if the time comes when they need to.
Roger: Absolutely. Now one thing you mentioned was the ACH deposit feature and that’s a real convenience for me, I love ACH, do you think there is a possibility you might allow ACH withdrawals in the future?
Ed: We’re working on that, our banking relationship hasn’t been able to provide it for us up until recently, they’ve come back and said they think they can make it work in a way that is secure and that’s obviously our first concern is make sure that everything is secure. So we are now in a Beta mode testing with them on that. I do hope that we can roll it out and ultimately will be for our technology guys to decide that it is fully secure and locked down and then we can roll it out. So I do think it will happen it’s just a matter of when.
Roger: Great, well one of things that as far as the minimum purchase level that a couple of people bumped across is maybe just because it wasn’t explained well enough or they didn’t understand it. Let’s say you have enough money in your account, funded, that you can buy, say, a 10 ounce Gold bar. And the price of Gold went down, and you say “hey, I’ve got enough left over that I could buy a Gold Eagle”, but, a Gold Eagle actually is in a different category and has to exceed the $5000 minimum as well. Do you see a chance for maybe in the future you might be able to aggregate those purchases to cross the $5000 threshold is is that simply something that your dealer network kind of puts a restriction on you?
Ed: Potentially, as we grow our volume we get more and more clout and we already are the largest customer for several of the members of our network, so I think it could happen. At the time I do try to be cognizant of the fact that what we’ve essentially done is we have taken an institutional level product and service and brought it to individual investors. We’ve been able to be successful in doing that by offering something that individual investors want, but also being mindful that the system and service works for all of our partners so that it’s a win-win all the way around. So far we have been able to do that.
I think as our volume continues to grow we will be able to get to that day when we can reduce, or in a perfect world, shed our minimums. We aren’t quite there yet, but I’m hopeful it will happen.
Roger: Well one of the things about your service is that you have very competitive storage fees for people who do choose to store in your vaults, will there be any kind of minimum storage fee complication once you implement the automatic investment plan for small accounts? I presume you have already looked at that but can you please comment on that briefly?
Ed: No, there won’t be any change in that our normal storage fees would apply, we felt like that was really important that we aggregate, that’s one example where we have been able to aggregate our volume and negotiate strong pricing for someone who’s maybe just starting out on the path to investing in precious metals or doesn’t have an unlimited supply of funds, and most of us don’t, to invest in precious metals; keeping it affordable, keeping the premiums and the costs of overhead as tight as possible, so, no there won’t be any issue with storage.
Roger: So in other words you’ll be “small account friendly” then.
Ed: Absolutely, Absolutely.
Roger: Was there anything else you would like to tell us about Hard Assets Alliance, precious metals investing, new products or other changes you see coming as we begin to close out 2013, a year that as we discussed before will certainly be one for the books?
Ed: Absolutely. I guess the only thing that I would end on is that if you are new to precious metal investing do take a moment to get up to speed on what the base case reasons are for investing in precious metals, I think you will find them quite compelling. No one believes for a moment that quantitative easing is going to end at the end of 2013. It’s here to stay on a worldwide basis, and at some point there are going to be consequences.
Your investment portfolio could use some insurance against some of the potential negative consequences of QE, which would be currency debasement, your dollar is worth less tomorrow than today. Inflation, similar type argument. So consider it, as an asset class, and if you want to learn more about our service, please check us out on our website.
Roger, I know you have a link on your site so that’s probably the best place for people to go, is just to go to your website and then click off onto our site.
Roger: Ed, I can’t thank you enough for your time speaking with us today, it’s been a real pleasure for me and I think there’s going to be a lot of great exposure for people who, as you say, are trying to learn more about precious metals and Gold and whether or not it’s right for their portfolio. Hopefully interviews like this will just help that and make things better for everyone.
Ed: Sounds good, Roger. Hey, I really appreciate the time I always enjoy speaking with you.
Roger: Thank you.
Ed: Take care.
Roger: You can find links to our full Hard Assets Alliances review and the Hard Assets Alliance website both on your screen and in the description of this recording.
We think you will be every bit as happy of a customer as we are should you decide to invest with them.
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For us it’s more than brochures, fancy websites and theory, it’s real life & real money.
That’s all for this time, thank you for joining us, I hope this has been helpful for you.
We also wish to extend our thanks to Ed D’Agostino and others at Hard Assets Alliance for making this interview possible.
We look forward to seeing you at BuyAndStoreGold.com and future interviews we do just like this one. Please subscribe to our channel so you get updates when those are available.
