What are the hedge's against inflation?

Question

are precious stones a hedge like precious metals?

What else?

Answer 1

Well I remember when gold was $35 an ounce. Now I can remember when it was nearly $1000. Metals like gold usually hold their value when inflation is up, and the stock market is down. Then everyone is buying gold. You have to buy it when things are good, and it is near a low price. Buying anything when it is near historic highs may not work out as the price may fall to way below what you paid for it. Anyways, my best advice? Get involved with a good mutual fund. There are thousands of them Just type mutual funds into any search engine and you will find them. Read up on the histories, and see what the return is. You will want to buy one with a good one, 5 and 10 year return. There is no "get rich quick" in mutual funds. Find one or serveral, and put you money in it, and watch it grow and don't micro manage your decsion. All funds go up and down, so that is why you will want to view the averages for that fund over time, not just what it did last year, or what it's doing the 2nd quarter of this year. If you have less than $5000 to invest, this is one of your safer bets. You may want to go talk to a mutual fund seller. JUST TO GET INFO, don't BUY anything on the first visit. A good one won't expect you to anyway. It's not like the stock market, when you are told to "get in now while it's low". Mutual funds don't work like that generally. A few weeks isn't going to matter. Good luck, and stay OUT of the stock market directly as you can make a lot of money, but you can also loose it too.  

Answer 2

Inflation indexed bonds.  

Answer 3

Basically commodities but their prices are affected by many more factors these days than they were historically.