Stocks and ETFs (Credit)

With tariffs collapsing the stock market it may not seem like a good time to buy stocks, but actually it’s a great time, if you have at least a 10-15 year horizon. Stocks and ETFs have a unique property which is unlike other investments. They can easily and instantly be borrowed against at favorable rates. Building a sizable portfolio that allows you to borrow on demand is the goal, as it simplifies personal finance, reduces exposure to high credit card rates, reduces tax liability, and makes it almost instant to access your funds.

My top choices for stocks and etfs in 2025? VOO, oil, gas, gold miners, and of course big tech stocks like Meta and Nvidia. I am focusing more on VOO, which is an S&P 500 ETF as it’s stability is more ideal for borrowing against than individual stocks.

My goal isn’t just to maximize growth by taking on unacceptably high risk. My goal is to replace borrowing from banks with borrowing against my portfolio. This makes me my own bank and greatly reduces my costs of borrowing, eliminates the need to make a minimum payment or a payment at all.

Bitcoin (Crypto)

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Bitcoin! People still doubt it, but Bitcoin has been around for over 10 years, it has outperformed any other asset, and in the latest market upheaval it held its ground better than anything else.

People don’t understand the value of bitcoin, it’s very simple. Bitcoin is a more private form of money that cannot be regulated like other currency. It is digital cash. It is used by countries to pay for things they don’t want on the books, to dodge sanctions, by huge criminal organizations and state sized actors to facilitate money laundering. Governments have recently been observed buying oil with bitcoin instead of USD to dodge sanctions.

That sounds bad, but it’s the facts. Bitcoin is the best way to send money without censorship and there are ways to do it privately. For this reason Bitcoin has value and it will always have value, as there are always people in government, commerce, surveillance, and involved in widespread criminal enterprises that need privacy when sending money. For the average user, it can also be used to pay for vpns, seedboxes (for file sharing), and even precious metals, without an obvious paper trail (if you use lightning network and do a few hops).

I personally use it to pay for my VPN, but for me, it is mostly a way to keep money in some other asset that is quickly available in times of extreme volatility. Another major value proposition for bitcoin is liquidity. It can be transferred from a cold wallet (offline) to an exchange rapidly, in some cases nearly instantaneously.

Why not alt coins?

They don’t have the same value proposition as bitcoin. They are less private, more cumbersome, less liquid, and the aspects of them that work well are mirrored by Bitcoin.

I personally don’t mess with them but that’s not to say others shouldn’t. I am focused on the long term, not short term speculation.

Precious Metals (sound money)

Silver and gold bullion share properties with stocks and crypto in that they’re considered investments, can be liquidated relatively quickly and without too much surveillance, and have pretty good privacy compared to using a bank account. Unfortunately unlike those other assets there are costs involved with owning physical metal. Those costs are premium (the amount paid to turn metal into a coin, bar, or piece of jewelry and some markup for the dealers), taxes (in some states), and storage fees. Even when stored at home, they take up physical real estate in your house.

I don’t see metals as an investment, I see them as an insurance policy. If you pay a premium for auto or life insurance you know that once the term expires, you have lost your payment.

In insurance there is another kind of policy called “whole life” insurance. As you pay your premium a small portion is set aside and invested and is available to you even after your payment of premium ceases. These policies are expensive and have a high opportunity cost, but I see physical bullion as executing the same strategy.

With insurance a small portion of your premium is invested, but with metals it’s flipped. Most of your cost is preserved in the metal, and a small amount is paid to the mint to make it into bullion.

The return on gold and silver has kept pace with other markets. Silver has averaged out to about 15% a year, and in terms of gold, the average return has beat Warren Buffet’s portfolio over the long tail. Sure some years, decades even, it looked like Warren had beat gold’s return handily but currently, gold has out performed Berkshire Hathaway stock over the last 20-30 years and with minimal risk and headache.

My strategy with silver is to buy ounces every month and just stack them away somewhere safe. There are lots of ways to buy metals. The only way I don’t recommend is through an ETF or other derivative. Paper gold and paper silver are not metal. They claim to be backed by the physical asset but you would have no claim on those bars if the fund went belly up.

I like to buy government issued coins made by the US mint. These are my favorite as nothing is more beautiful than lady Liberty emblazoned on our currency. I also like the motif of Winged Victory on the Mexican Libertad, or the South African Krugerrand with its majestic antelope. I will also buy the occasional Canadian maple, if I can find them with Elizabeth. There are lots of coins from around the world, China issues pandas, Australia, Kangaroos, Austria has the philharmonic coins, etc.

Collecting silver can be a hobby, I also buy bars and coins from private mints with “fun” designs and motifs like cowboys, buffalo, and dragons. Finally. I like to buy constitutional silver like 90% mercury dimes, Morgan and Peace dollars, and occasional Franklins, various other half dollars, etc. Morgan dollars were minted in the 1800s and are considered “cowboy” money of the old west, as that was a popular coin in circulation at the time. The Peace dollar is more beautiful but also more common and can usually be found for minimal markup. I find these coins regularly at antique shops but they’re also all over ebay and available through online retailers as well.

Finally another way to buy is .925 jewelry, vintage pieces can be found on eBay at affordable rates, but there is always the risk of being scammed. I also purchase silver jewlery from imbuedjewelry.com, as they have some of the best prices I’ve seen in this category. Silver jewlery can have quite the markup but it serves dual purposes and you get some use out of it, where a coin just sits in a drawer.

Why I like Silver:

Silver is used in solar and in batteries. It is more abundant than gold, but in coinage, it is rarer than gold because it is needed in great quantities for industry and is often not recycled, when demand for silver is high people sell their coins for a nice premium and it is often sold to scrappers who melt it.

Silver for hundreds of years was 16:1 to gold, meaning 16 oz of silver bought 1 oz of gold. Today you’d need over 100oz of silver to buy 1 oz of gold. This makes silver historically underpriced by a huge amount. Will silver ever return to 16:1? My guess is most likely not, but 60:1 or 35:1 is not unreasonable.

Metals are very slow moving assets, gold’s bull run is likely to continue but it’s around it’s inflation adjusted historical high of $3500, silver, adjusted for inflation would need to get to about $140-$190 to break it’s all time high.

Why not Gold?

Gold is a great form of money, I prefer to buy 24k gold jewelry from Mené, a jeweler that makes beautiful items out of pure gold. Initially their markup was similar to that of coins but over time they’ve increased their fees, and I haven’t had an interest in buying any. Gold and silver can serve dual purposes, as a form of cash and as a piece of jewelry that can enhance your appearance.

Right now gold is setting records, so while I’d have loved to own a lot more of it, I will not buy more unless we see a nice pull back or until at least half of my overall allocation in metal is 50/50 silver to gold. I keep buying silver but gold keeps running away. That’s OK, I want to have a lot of one of them, and I most likely will never be able to justify or be able to afford putting a lot of money into a physically substantial amount of gold, but you can have a lot of silver, a physically impressive amount for a few thousand dollars. A 100oz bar of silver is about $3800 while a 100oz of gold is going to run about 100x more than that right now, or $380,000

Platinum and Palladium:

Platinum used to sell north of $3400 an oz. It’s currently under $1000. It is a much rarer metal than gold, but its primary use is industrial, and it looks a lot like the other white metals including white gold and silver. The more industrial a metal is the more volatile it is. Platinum could make a comeback but I’d rather have silver or gold.

Copper:

I often see people selling copper bullion online. Copper is a beautiful metal, but it is not a good store of value. It costs far more to make copper into a coin or bar than the metal is worth. It’s for entertainment purposes only, unless you’re recovering it from scrap somehow.

Alternatives

Collectibles hold their value, but there is a lot more nuance. I like to buy cameras, digital and film, vintage watches (quartz watches) as I personally believe these have a lot lower risk and more upside potential (and can be fun to wear regardless).

I think collectibles that are hot and will always stay hot are things like cameras, watches, art, legos, cards, pottery (if you know what to buy), books (I collect photography books) etc.

Other ways to invest for a sure return in a down market is into tools that make your life cheaper to live. Things like a garden, reloading equipment (if you are into shooting sports), mechanics tools, power tools, and in anything that makes you more self sufficient – even food storage like a deep freezer or pantry – that allows a person to buy in bulk when there are sales. This ain’t about being frugal, it’s about being efficient so that you can divert additional funds to investments and assets.