Yesterday I got back from a weekend away where I was without access to the internet for four days. It was a risk – sometimes automatic digital delivery can go wrong and people need help – but luckily I got a nice break from the internet and didn’t come back to any screaming customers.

Which gave me a little time to think…

I found an ad in a national paper over the weekend offering what seemed like a great bargain. A 19th Century gold sovereign for just £120.

The ad made it clear that there has been a huge increase in the price of gold and that it has been a great investment over the last few years. And it has. Since I’ve been into financial trading, gold has risen from around $380 an ounce (late 2003) to around $1,000 per ounce.

My immediate thoughts were that it may be worth investing £120 for one of these coins. Of course, without the internet I had no way of finding out whether it was a good deal or not.

The ad made it clear you’d be offered further coins in the future unless you opted out. I thought that the first coin might have been offered slightly below actual value as a “loss leader” to gather names.

Buying gold at slightly below what it is currently worth was very attractive to me and so when I got back to a PC, I went to work.

Gold, today, is trading at about $980 per ounce and a pound is worth about $1.9875. So, back of an envelope calculation, gold is about £493 per ounce.

These sovereigns weigh 0.2354 oz which comes out at about £116 if it is pure gold.

However, and I didn’t know this before, 24 carat gold is considered “pure”.

22 carat gold is considered 91.6% pure and these sovereigns were 22 carat so their “fineness” is 916 out of 1,000.

Technically, buying one of these sovereigns would result in me getting about 0.2156oz of gold.

Which I work out as being worth 0.2156 x £490 = c. £106.

Net result: the sovereign is available for £119 but is worth roughly £106.

Glad I did my research before blindly sending off for the coin…

I also came back to several not-too-pleasant comments on the blog. Somebody pointed out to me that a couple of these comments could actually be considered libellous.

Needless to say, they were removed.

And I am now considering whether or not to remove the comments feature altogether. As I was told by a business associate:

“…the problem with running forums etc as I once found when I ran one too is that anyone who feels a little brave behind a keyboard can post anything and you as the forum owner are responsible. I closed mine down long ago as I saw no sense in spending time monitoring posts from nutters that could lead to legal action and me possibly losing my house. It just didn’t seem worth it to me…”

Scary stuff and so I will be monitoring comments very closely from now on!

Lastly, I found I had some money sat in my BetOnMarkets account so I had a little punt:

Bear Contract: Win GBP10 if, at the close of trading on 13-MAR-08, GBP/USD is lower than 2.

My thinking was, looking at the chart, there seems to be a resistance level at 2.00 so it was worth a very small wager for a bit of harmless fun. It only cost £7.45 so it’s a couple of pints worth of risk!

Just for the lawyers: THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE – please don’t copy my trade blindly.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Ben