Adding precious metals to your investment portfolio is easier with stocks, futures, options, and exchange traded funds.

Opportunities for investors and traders are made possible with the base metals, and rare earth metals such as gold, palladium and neodymium.

To get the complete list of the 94 naturally occuring elements a periodic table which shows alkali metals, alkaline metals, transition metals, metalloids, non-metals, halogens, and noble gases.

As you are probably aware base metals are used in commercial and industrial industries such as copper plumbing, aluminum cans and production steel for automobiles.

To participate in the base metals market investors need to first look for companies that specialize in trading on the NASDAQ. You can find copper futures on the CME Globex, aluminum, and zinc from mining industries on the NYSE.

Experienced traders learn how to use base metals as an economic indicator. How this is done the movement in the new york stock exchange can forecast if there is a possiblility of future inflation or weakness in the global economies.

Base metals are used to determine the economic activity around the world. One the main reasons is because of its use in manufacturing, construction and production.

This can be seen in copper, zinc, aluminum, steel, tin and lead. The price movements are more affordable and a good investment for those looking to make a profit from these precious metals.

The downside is that base metal prices can rise and fall on speculation as in the case of the federal reserve issurance of more government debt causing a demand for precious metals to hedge against inflation.

The weak dollar or japanese yen is a prime example of how this works.

Knowing who is driving the demand in the market will help in deciding if purchasing more hard assets is the best option.

Scarcity of metals adds more value and the rarer the commodity the higher the price will be.

As you probably have noticed in areas of jewelry, art, coins, dental work, medical devices and electronics these natural occuring metallic elements that have a high luster and melting point.

Invest in the metals market tips

For those interested in the precious metals markets, gold is considered a solid investment that can be obtained in the form of jewelry, coin or gold bars. Investers see it as a security blanket.

If you do not want to handle the physical inventory of gold bars you have the option of trading mutual funds, ETFs, or options.

There are also future options for silver, platinum and palladium from the canadian based CME Group which can be found on Scottstrade and iShares.