You’ve cracked under the crunch, retched in the recession, and deflated with inflation. So where’s your physical gold? What? You mean you have no pile of physical gold under your bed, gently poking through the mattress to remind you you’re safe? Are you mad?

These are hard times. So, your stocks and bonds may be down, but that’s when gold goes up. Just look at the price: by the end of 2009, gold had increased by 400% over the decade to more than $1,100 an ounce. What else do you have in your house that can boast that kind of price-to-weight ratio?
And you don’t have to be a nation to buy physical gold, because we’re not necessarily talking big shiny bars in Fort Knox that people can’t lift. It comes in other forms, too; manageable forms. If you’re very rich, you might want a 1kg cast bar which is about as big as your mobile phone. Many people find they can afford 100g gold ingots, but smaller investors can go for gold coins, which can also accrue “collector value”.

Physical gold is safe and profitable. You can store it in your very own “biscuit tin” to safeguard against risky derivative investments. But how can you be sure that gold is going to continue performing so well? Because of increasing global demand! China wants it; India wants it; enormous emerging nations who just can’t get enough of the stuff all want it. Western businesses are constantly relocating to China and farming out work to India, because these young and growing economies are so accommodating and desperate for development.

The nation’s debt weakens its currency, but it doesn’t weaken the value of gold. As investments are devalued, gold just goes on climbing up and up. It’s the only sure way for you to protect yourself, since paper assets of all kinds are so prone to the vagaries of the markets. And gold is all the more an attractive proposition for being such a liquid asset: convert it easily, any time, to money.

Physical gold means physical possession. Hold on to your wealth, literally. Feel it, smell it, taste it, then pinch yourself to be sure that all that profitability isn’t just a dream. It can be delivered to your home and you can keep it there—as long as that biscuit tin is reinforced steel, fire-safe and bolted to your foundations—or you can keep it in a deposit box at your bank.

There are 167,000 tons of “above-ground” gold in the world; that’s all the gold that’s ever been mined. That’s not a great deal, and mining only produces small amounts over long periods, but the global demand for gold continues to grow. So, as long as that demand exceeds supply—and the powerful, burgeoning economies ensure it will—the actual value of gold increases, not just its price.

If nothing else, physical gold is stable enough to see a sizeable chunk of your portfolio through difficult times. So go on—get some gold under the bed. Sweet dreams!