Buy Gold Without Being Weighed Down

When markets get turbulent, people ponder the "safety" of gold. Of course, never mind that gold has proven far from safe over the years. Between its peak in 1980 and late 1999, it plunged from $1,000 an ounce to just $255.

And if you want to measure the full loss to investors, you need to factor in the missed opportunity of putting that money to work in the stock market instead. Nevertheless, the gold shills are everywhere today. You see them on the TV, in the paper, and hear them on the radio. They're selling fear.

If you want to put some of your money in gold, you don't need to send off for gold coins. You don't need to send a check to some stranger. You don't need to pay postage. And you certainly don't need to hide your gold coins in a sock, or pay to put them in a safe deposit box.

There's a perfectly good exchange-traded fund that will do all this for you, and you can invest in gold with a click of a mouse at any online brokerage.

State Street chief executive Ron Logue has found the Midas touch since he launched the (GLD Quote)streetTRACKS Gold fund (GLD) two years ago. In fact, I called him "Goldfinger" a couple of years ago when I figured out that he -- or rather, the fund -- controlled the largest single deposit of gold in private hands in the world.

At the time, the fund held about $3 billion worth of gold; last month, the figure topped $10 billion.