How to buy gold to diversify your portfolio and help shield against market downturns

Bullion coins and bars are the "purest" way to invest in gold, but can be costly to own and slow to sell. lionvision/Getty Images Physical gold can be bought for investment in two basic ways: bullion bars or coins.

Buying physical gold involves researching reputable dealers, understanding pricing, and shouldering storage costs.

Alternatives to physical gold include gold stocks and funds — less "pure," but more liquid, investments.

Visit Business Insider’s Investing Reference library for more stories . You often hear folks talk about investing in gold . Which begs the question: Exactly how do you buy gold? And perhaps more importantly, why would anyone want to?The short answer is that gold can be a smart way to diversify a portfolio — especially one filled with the usual investment suspects: stocks, bonds, and funds.Not only is gold largely immune to inflation, instead hewing closely to the cost of […]

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