Long Position on Silver and Gold?

[ChunkyMonkey]

Seems like you are comparing below securities investors VS above average real estate investors.
Just look at Forbes richest 400.

Let's look at the fee:
secondary market $10mil comission is ~$9.99.
$10mil Real estate commission is ~6% ($600k)

securities are liquid
real estates needs 6% again to sell, if they can sell it.

I don't need to worry about tenant suing me. FEE on ROTH/IRA? Sure, I only pay $9.99 for a fee. It cost far less than fixing a door knob for tenants.

One of benefit I see on real estate investment is the rental income. Oh wait.... I can always write/sell Way out of money call/puts (some calls it Lotto Options) to create income too with nano/pico risk!

Not an analysis or market expert like many claims to be, but I do have comparison in real life experience after losing 180k over night during the internet bubble and making it back up in short time in real estate. Fixing door knob etc is property manager's job on each property. You are still thinking capital gain, which I used to too. Forget the capitalization, instead, think dividend. A fair comparison in your post would be between a daily trader and a fix and flipper (both are high risk imho).

Here is another recent real experience of my long time buddy who I finally convinced to leave the market... He had close to $100k in 2 different 401k - which had doubled the past 10 years or so. I convinced him to transfer them into self directed IRA account, since he insisted on not cashing out, or paying the capital gain and get over it.

So he used the 100k in the new self directed IRA to put down payments on 8 different rental units. With today's low low rate, he nets roughly $5000 a month after mortgage, insurance, some HOA, and 8% in property manager fee.

The math is extremely simple, he goes from doubling his retirement in 10 years, to doubling it in 2 years thanks to bank's leverage. Most of all, these are real asset that leverage against inflation, unlike paper money or stock. By switching his portfolio from the stock into housing market, his growth is going 5x as fast. Now, he is learning his mistake. If he wouldve cashed out his 401k instead of going IRA, he doesn't have to pay 30% in the future whem his portfolio will be much larger.

Now keep in mind, in rental units, you must ignore 'capital gain' as everything is for long term (traditional market trend shows that your house will gain 100% of its value every decade or so http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xy8GnkXGKB...3-jan-2013.png). You can compare this part with stock market (dow jones was at 10000 in 2003 and now barely passed 16000 - 60% gain average).

Of course, most stock brokers/ daily traders love to argue that his picks are much higher than average. Hell, I used to do that during the mid 90s..until the crash and got schooled by a college friend when he showed me his 300 rental unit portfolio. Best part is, anyone with a descent credit can do the exact same. Those days of staring at 3 CRTs are long gone.. !