An investor's best friend?

Gems: An investor's best friend - at Moneyweek.co.uk - the best of the week's international financial media.

Most diamonds aren't forever, says Natasha Langan. Neither are most emeralds, sapphires and rubies. If you want to make money out of investing in gems, you've got to pick your targets very carefully.

There is something amazingly compelling about gems, and it isn't the fact that they sparkle when the light catches them. Glass and cheap garnets do that just as well. No, the real attraction of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and rubies lies in our belief that their rarity makes them special, both in terms of glamour and price. We see gems as long-term stores of value - you can't go wrong with a diamond. If your life goes well, you can flash it on your finger indefinitely. And if it doesn't? Well, what's more portable and liquid in a time of crisis than a handful of gems? They're the smallest physical store of money around.

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Natasha read politics at Sussex University. She then spent a decade in social care, before completing a postgraduate course in Health Promotion at Brighton University. She went on to be a freelance health researcher and sexual health trainer for both the local council and Terrence Higgins Trust.

In 2000 Natasha began working as a freelance journalist for both the Daily Express and the Daily Mail; then as a freelance writer for MoneyWeek magazine when it was first set up, writing the property pages and the “Spending It” section. She eventually rose to become the magazine’s picture editor, although she continues to write the property pages and the occasional travel article.