In particular, my favorites are silver, land, uranium and oil. I know oil has lots of substitutes, and I’m actually a huge fan of solar power (Especially Sterling Energy Systems and their Solar Concentrators!) but I am also a realist and know that oil is, for now, our main source of energy (besides the sun!). I also invest in solar companies so I’m partly hedged against the fall of oil that will surely and hopefully come!!

Uranium is very important as there are a whole lot of nuclear power plants being built so the supply/demand fundamentals should stay right on track. I don’t like investing in uranium as it can be used to destroy the damn planet and I would hate to be the idiot that helped fund the building of a mine from which the contents were used to blow myself or others up.

As for silver, it is now being used in many technology applications (chips) and also as an investment tool like gold.

Gold has never been my favorite, mainly because too many other people ‘like it’ and I’m a bit of a contrarian in that regard. I hate following others.

Finite resources are still a great investment even though the entire universe is made up of them. When wars are fought, people are killed, all over these finite resources (even land is a finite resource), you know they have tremendous value.

And I consider rare products and human talens a rare resource…

Gold seems like a finite resource (there’s only so much of it on the planet), but its possible to create gold from lead (and if the price gets high enough, it wil become economically viable to do so) - http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm suddenly the finite isn’t so finite.

There’s only so much oil on the planet, as it get depleted prices will rise, until a comparable source of dense energy becomes attractive (hydrogren, ethanol, efficient solar power and large batteries- I’m not sure).

Investing in finite resource can actually be dangerous, because there’s no way to make sure technology won’t suddenly make it a lot easier to aquire (and therefore far less valuable). Gold prices would go down in a hurry if there was a very cheap way to make it from lead (I’d guess it would drop to almost the same price as lead).

I’m amazed at the ability of marketting to protect the value of diamonds in the face of superior, cheap, man-made diamonds (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html). I wouldn’t invest in Da Beers if you paid me (well, maybe if you paid me… it’d have to be a lot though). Finite becomes plentiful yet again.

Resources are finite, but they’re what the entire universe is made up of…