The ideal percentage allocation between gold & silver

There are three major types of Perth Mint Depository investor:

1. Those that only buy gold
2. Those that only buy silver
3. Those that buy 50% gold and 50% silver

There are others who include platinum, or have different percentages, but the above three types are a significant majority of our clients. I find it interesting that most investors who weren’t strong goldbugs or silverbugs and couldn’t decide between them went with a simple 50/50 strategy. This begs the question: is this a good strategy and what is the ideal percentage allocation one should make between gold and silver?

To answer this I have assumed an investor saving regularly for retirement, for simplicity $100 a month, including rebalancing each month to bring the value of gold and silver held back to the target percentages. I also assume an investing period of 25 years, on the basis that one does not start saving serious money until 40 (see this post for the investor lifecycle logic behind this) and retires at 65.

I then ran through every combination of gold and silver percentages to come up with a total value at the end of the 25 year investing period (which is 300 months, or $30,000 in total cash invested).[read more]