Safeguard your retirement funds - Diversify your asset portfolio
Given the fiscal crises many states — federal as well as provincial — are facing, it is only a matter of time before more politicians turn their pecuniary focus on private savings (since there is no such thing as public savings these days). The Eurozone finance minister Jerome Dijsselbloem said that the Cyprus deal will serve as a template or model for future bank restructurings. Argentina and Hungary have already moved to nationalize private pensions, and there have been rumblings about a mixing of private and public pension funds in the United States.
Does this mean we now even have to question the sacredness of the FDIC $250,000 ($500,000 for married couple) deposit guarantee? If not even cash is safe, what is? Savers have already been punished thanks to a decline in interest rates. With cash being trashed, we need to remind ourselves to diversify into real assets.
To safeguard their assets, many of you have already heavily invested in gold and silver. If you are looking for diversification but would like to stay in hard assets and even more specifically, metals, there is a new, valuable asset class of metals to consider. What metals are we talking about? They are not household names but they are in almost everything in and around the house. This ranges from kitchen appliances and cutlery, TVs, flat screens, and I Pads, cell and smart phones, automobiles and even the new efficient solar panels, medicines and creams to name just a very few of their myriad applications.
The world of today cannot live without the metals of tomorrow. In fact, National Geographic referred to them as “The Secret Ingredient of Almost Everything”. The metal assets I am talking about are rare and strategic metals such as rhenium, indium, gallium, hafnium, tantalum, tellurium and molybdenum, to name a few.
Let´s take rhenium for example. Rhenium is a silvery-white, heavy, third-row transition metal. With an estimated average concentration of 1 part per billion (ppb), rhenium is one of the rarest elements in the earth’s crust. Rhenium is so important to industry because it has the third highest melting point of all elements.
Over 80% of the world’s rhenium is consumed in the manufacturing of super alloys for consumption mostly in jet engine aircraft turbine alloys. General Electric, Pratt and Whitney, and Rolls Royce, are the main consumers. Current projections for the future of commercial aerospace demand for rhenium are bullish, as the global aircraft fleet is expected to double over the next 20 years.
In addition to strong commercial aircraft projections, both the developed and the developing world’s sustained military investments in high tech aircraft will further increase this number supporting jet engine production. For example, in early August 2012, Russia announced its plans to modernize its air force through 2020 by investing $723 billion toward purchasing 600 new planes, 1,000 new helicopters, and in overhauling existing planes. This ensures an increasing demand for rhenium, keeping a stable and increasing price curve. Another interesting fact is that currently, rhenium is sold on a fixed price contract, this contract will expire in 2013, and place rhenium back on the spot price market. In 2008 it had a high of $12,000 per kilo.
Other uses for rhenium bearing alloys are in the construction of crucibles, electrical contacts, electromagnets, electron tubes and targets, heating elements, ionization gauges, mass spectrographs, metallic coatings, semiconductors, temperature controls, thermocouples, and vacuum tubes.
Even without new discoveries for critical applications of the metal, the world’s sustained demand for rhenium from within the sphere of commercial and military aircraft manufacturing well into the next two decades suggests there will be little relief for a market where supply is continually outstripped by demand. Current world production is 46 tons per year, the demand is currently 54 tons per year.
Ownership and offshore storage of rare and strategic metals is one of the smartest things you can do to ensure your financial future. Swissmetal Inc. provides rare strategic and precious metals with private storage in Switzerland and Panama. Unfortunately, the term “offshore investing” strikes many individuals as something almost illegal, not quite above board. While the media does tend to paint a shade, dark picture of it, the fact is the majority of these investments are perfectly legal, and the advantages over investing in the U.S. many:
There is currently no clear reporting obligation. Unlike precious metals that are sensitive and are subject to various tax, treasury and anti-money-laundering controls, rare and strategic tech metals are much less sensitive. These are not financial assets that sit in an account. They are physical things that you own. You can even own them anonymously if you wish as the companies acquiring and storing them are private. You can even own pure silver & gold this way in industrial granulate form, that doesn’t class as bullion or precious metals.
