Gold and silver investors are on a high after President Trump announced he wanted to take over Greenland – causing both gold and silver prices to rally to new record highs.

He then later backtracked (as he always does) but gold and silver still advanced, with the latter notching up an incredible 10% surge in the past week.

All of this does beg the question; is it purely FOMO driving this or are these precious metals actually worth having in your portfolio?

As I covered in one of my latest Instagram posts this week, silver has actually outperformed gold over the past 5 years and 20 years. But that masks a pretty disappointing decade in the 2010s – for both precious metals.

Indeed, silver returned just over 6% from 2010 to the end of 2019, meaning it clocked up annualised returns of a meagre 0.6% per annum (p.a.).

Gold, meanwhile, saw a total return of 37%, or 3.2% p.a., over the same timeframe. Both had strong returns early in the decade (2011) before they petered out and either fell or traded sideways for years.

All this came in a decade where equities absolutely soared. Admittedly, today’s geopolitical (and inflation) outlook is extremely different to then but it doesn’t mask the fact there are long periods of underperformance by both gold and silver.

In terms of our asset allocation, a “sensible” allocation to gold would be in the range of 5% to 15% but I personally think a gold allocation of 20% to 25%, that some strategists out there are suggesting, is excessively high.

And what about silver? It seems to be more of a speculative play that’s driven by both hype and a genuince shortage right now. If either of those two things fade, then the crash back to reality could be harsh for silver.  

Check out my latest YouTube video! Subscribe and follow along as I share a weekly tip on my Tim Talks Money channel.

With air miles increasingly hard to come by after a series of “nerfs” to a lot of our favourite 4-mile-per-dollar (4mpd) cards, it’s worth exploring how else we can earn miles.

One of the easiest ways to do it is via Kris+, the Singapore Airlines lifestyle rewards app that lets you earn miles on spend at various retail and dining outlets in Singapore.

While it did use to offer a lot more miles for specific merchants, you can still earn up to 6 miles per dollar at various spot.

If you stack that with an online spending card (such as the DBS Woman’s World Mastercard) then you can potentially earn up to 10 miles per dollar on transactions via the app.

Another option would be to use the UOB KrisFlyer Mastercard, which gives you 3 miles per dollar on all Kris+ spend, with no cap to the amount you can earn on it.

So, the next time you’re grabbing lunch/dinner or thinking of buying something in a Singapore mall, check on the Kris+ app whether the vendor is on there because you might be able to pick up some extra miles.

In this miles-inflationary environment, every little helps if you’re going to spend at a merchant anyway.

If you’re not on Kris+ yet, just sign up with my referral code P210083 and get rewarded with 500 KrisPay miles (equivalent to $5) upon your first transaction.