Help! Invest in Gold or Foreign Currency?

In Malaysia, property prices are crazy. Early this year, I have seen the price of a 1400 sq. ft. condo in Vista Komanwel go from about MYR250k to MYR400k; and today I heard that someone is interested to buy that same property at MYR441k.

I am not an expert or even a student of the property market or the economy by any means but that really send warning bells to me that something bad is going to happen in the near future.

In my opinion, I think Malaysian currency is in the process of loosing it's value relative to our neighbouring countries. No matter what the Malaysian government says about our current inflation rates, I think a lot of BS are being propagated and we are not getting the whole picture.

In my opinion, the Malaysia property market is going to get screwed before end of 2013. This property bubble just cannot sustain itself. The prices of properties are just too ridiculous! And that will start the ball rolling for all bad things when the bubble burst!

So what is the next step? For families like mine, where my 3 children are still below ten, what should we do? How will we be able to provide for their education and cost of living? Education insurance? Bank Savings?

Actually I am really at a lost of what is the best thing to do. But two things are for sure:

1. Must not put savings in MYR!
2. Must sell all properties to take advantage of the current price.

And so, now I must look for ways to invest to make sure that I don't get screwed. A couple of friends are heavily invested in Gold, which I think is not a bad idea. My current options are:

1. Gold Investment Accounts
2. Foreign Currency Accounts

After reading some online articles and exploring various institutional offerings, I think I have to know what my goals are.

1. Is it to profit from investing in the above two options?
2. Or is it to maintain the current value of the savings?

The following is the 5 Year Gold Price in USD per oz.



You can see that the general trend is upward with various corrections along the way but still upward. Just something to think about.

Check out the following Forex charts comparing the MYR against various currencies between 12/3/2004 and 9/3/2011. Watch the trend, is it a reliable indicator?


USD is the only currency that the MYR seem to be stronger.


The Renminbi is seen to be the next World currency. But when?







The Singapore dollar is on top of my watch list, not so much for profiteering but rather for security reasons, plus the fact that it is Malaysia's closest neighbour making it very accessible :-)

Still a lot of things to research into. If I can just managed to sell that property of mine at that ridiculous price, then I will need to do some serious thinking and decision making.

References:

• http://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html#5_year_gold_price
• http://www.exchange-rates.org/history/MYR/SGD/G/3000