Gold is not an investment that immediately springs to mind when individuals come into some money or want to create a nest egg for themselves. This is because in the past it was difficult to obtain and then sell. Ultimately, investors just want a good return on their money. Gold can provide that through bad times and good ones, and it is now easier than ever to trade it you only need to go to your web browser and find a site that gives you access to quantities and values you wish to buy. Retirement is one financial target that just about everyone has in common and now there is more pressure than ever to ensure you can afford it, so investing wisely now is your only change.

Despite the enormous changes between the very first cultures who used gold, and our modern society, gold itself has not changed at all. We still mine it in roughly the same manner, and produce gold coins and blocks that someone from the middle ages would have recognised. What's fantastic at the present time is that if you own a credit card or PayPal account, you too can trade gold with the big brokers online. The generation of new wealth today is largely information based. We have the ability to gather, consume and analyze far more data in a single 24 hour period than all previous generations could assemble in a week.

One of the surprising elements of gold is that even items created in our past - say, one thousand years ago - still have the ability to make people stop and stare in wonder. Industry and jewellery manufacturers mainly use gold today. While we sometimes still see it in a domestic setting (think of gold taps) it is not so fashionable as it once was. The great thing today is, of course, that anyone with a little bit of spare cash can invest in gold. With much of our ever increasing wealth being created and transferred by computers, it is somewhat ironic that gold plays such an integral part in the circuitry and therefore the heart of even these modern machines.

In a way, people look on gold as a way to keep money safe. Because of the way people have valued it for centuries, many investors believe that gold will always hold a certain amount of value. This has certainly been born out during the recent financial troubles, and everyone knows that when things are looking decidedly uncertain, gold is the place to "store" your money. Heavy with the weight of debt taken on to prop up banks and underwrite failing economies in Europe, it will be worth paying attention to non share asset prices as the western world heads into a period of economic growth. It is inevitable that the debt levels of at least one western country will become a serious problem, short term there may be a drop in commodity prices, but we still haven't worked out all of the problems with the system so people holding precious metals long term should do very well.

One thing you have to keep in mind when investing or trading on gold is that prices will not rise forever. For those who like to deal in slightly more complex financial instruments, you can always invest in put options or ETFs in the event of the price of gold falling. With so much having changed in the last few years in world of online investing technology, it is now easier to achieve the level of portfolio diversification you need through buying gold online with only a few mouse clicks.