So Which Is Better In A Bull Or Bear Market ? Gold Or Silver And How Do They Perform Often ?

The historical charts for gold, silver and also stock index prices are all online. You can do a Google search and find them. It all depends on the timing, when bought, when sold. During specific time periods gold has done better or silver has done better or stocks have done better. Stocks in bull markets usually do better than gold/silver. Looks like for all of 2022 gold/silver will not be far from their prices Jan. 1 2022, much better than stock indexes which have dropped considerably except for energy stocks like oil.

For gold or silver bullion/bars, buy those with lowest premiums you can find. For collectable gold/silver coins get the highest grade you can afford IMO. Higher grade classic/rare coins have appreciated more than low grade coins I think.

Much of the gold/silver you listed is mostly dependent on spot prices. Their long term possible appreciation will be similar.

My financial advisor suggests owning 5% - 10% or so of gold/silver in investment holdings. I'm a little higher than that cause I like precious metals.

The prices for "collectable bullion" - coins, nuggets and themed rounds - tends to be independent of the stock market or the bullion market, as demand for such things is driven by collectors, not investors. And the price of platinum is driven by industry and technology demand, rather than the financial sector.

The price of your collectable gold coin has two components: the bullion value, and the numismatic premium; they add together to give the total price for your coin. Now consider a time when the gold price is surging; the market value for your bullion coin isn't going to be surging quite as much, because collectors aren;t willing to suddenly pay more for coins just because the bullion price is going up. This means that while the bullion value is going up, the numismatic premium is actually going down. It's even possible for the numismatic premium to fall all the way to zero during such times, which is when coins enter the melting pot. Why would a sensible speculator want to hold onto something that decreases in value, when they can choose to hold onto something that suffers no such flaw?

As a general rule, bullion goes up when the stock market is down, and vice versa - the people fleeing the stock market during a bust or crash want to park their money somewhere, and bullion is seen as one of the "safe havens". This is especially true at times of low inflation, when parking money in the bank offers poor returns.

This may seem paradoxical to the ruling paradigm that "gold is a hedge against inflation". Over the very long term, it is true, but over short term, it usually isn't - in times of high inflation, it's usually not too hard to find somebody offering better rates of return than gold. Just consider the last time we had high inflation, during the 1970s and 1980s: first the gold price spiked, then the gold price tanked so badly, that Australians who bought $200 gold koala coins during the spike would take them to the bank for face value, rather than a bullion dealer, because the bank gave them more money.