How Cramer's Playing Gold

Every investor should own some gold, Jim Cramer said on CNBC's "Mad Money."

After all, gold tends to go up when everything else goes down, Cramer explained. Cramer likened it to an insurance policy against economic or geopolitical chaos, uncertainty and inflation. When other stocks would fall in response to such calamities, gold tends to rise. Owning gold minimizing your risk to the downside, he said. Consider getting into the precious metal through the SPDR Gold Sharesexchange-traded fund.

Cramer said investors could also asked their broker about buying bullion, which is the actual physical bars of gold. He added that buying bullion only makes sense for investors, who can afford to buy in bulk and pay for the bricks to be stored in a depository bank.

If interested in gold miners, the "Mad Money" host recommends looking for companies with low costs and production growth. He warned that the miners are often prone to an array of setbacks, including debt, mismanagement and the like, but investors who do their homework can often avoid these issues. Nevertheless, Cramer isn't recommending any gold mining stocks right now.

"If you want exposure to gold — and you not only want it, you need it, it's your portfolio's insurance policy and everybody should have some — then you should just do the easy thing and own gold through the GLD, not some gold miner that's only loosely connected to the price of the underlying commodity."

When this story was published, Drew Sandholm owned the GLD.

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