You’ve done right by yourself and your family so far. You’ve contacted a broker, set up a few common stock and bond holdings – even given him a bit of cash to use at his discretion to further pad your portfolio to make paying for your kids’ college easier.

But that was a few years ago, and you’ve grown. An increasingly savvy investor, you now want to explore ways to make your portfolio – and your kids’ lives – better for the not-too-distant future, when they’ll need to draw on your holdings to pay for college.

You’re thinking about diversifying, but you’re not sure where to start.

By the end of this article, you should understand the precious metals investing route.

Why Choose Precious Metals Investing?

For you, the investor, precious metals are one of a must-have breed: diversifiers.

That is, they help cushion your holdings against short-term fluctuations in the general stock market, where most of your common stock and bond holdings come from, and long-term downward trends. As you well know, selling prices can vary wildly from day to day, but the broader strength of a particular industry can be as dicey over time.

That’s why you need sure things, safe bets, or, in other words, portfolio diversifiers.

For you, the investor, precious metals are one of an increasingly few such safe bets.

How Does Precious Metals Investing Work For Me?

Primarily, through four ways.

The first and most obvious is the long-term. This is exactly why you should approach precious metals investing with a long view: your holding of gold, silver, platinum and palladium are likely to do the best of their work over time, say, 10 or 20 years.

Or, just in time for you to pay for Timmy’s four-year tour at State.

But – and though this may not apply to you, it’s still worth noting – they can also be extremely profitable in the hyper short-term. This type of note is typically for, well, people who already engage in such activity, hardcore stock and bond brokers and traders that take advantage of the slightest day-to-day fluctuations and arbitrage opportunities – but it’s worth knowing that there are opportunities to cash in quick.

It takes a special kind of investor to pull it off, and shouldn’t be something you “try.”

But if you’ve got the expertise, dedication and good ol’ fashioned luck, making nearly immediate gains by precious metals investing is, in fact, a totally feasible option for you.

To describe the inner dynamic of what’s actually happening as precious metals are earning for you money, we have to major points of discussion.

First is that, generally speaking, precious metal and other commodity movements are highly independent of the grander marketplace. That isn’t to say there’s a tight inverse relationship, and that bad for everyone else means good for you – and, conversely, when things go well for the rest of the world, your holdings begin to sour.

It’s just to say that it’s different.

And so, if the market begins to slide, you’re well-situated to ward off losses. In fact, with gold in particular, there’s actually quite a bit of lit out there to suggest that in times of a serious stock market downward spiral, the price of gold actually shoots through the roof.

Setting us up for a perfect segue: the second way that gold, silver, platinum and palladium work for you is that they’re often the forms of release for skittish investors. The second the market begins to dip, many investors flock to commodities market in droves. This sudden spike in demand does the same to price. And thus, you get gains.