“A billion dollars ain’t what  it used to be.” Bunker Hunt reportedly said those words in the early 1980s after the Hunt brothers lost a large chunk of their family fortune in their ill-fated cornering of the silver market.  But John Paulson must be thinking the same thing.  After Monday’s 9.3% drop, Paulson has personally...Read More

It is truly a digital age: gold bugs have gone virtual. I’m talking about Bitcoin, of course.  I realize that Bitcoin is not gold and has nothing to do with gold; it is a true cyber currency made of nothing but ones and zeros.  But its popularity is driven by the same forces that have...Read More

Gold is a frustrating investment, even for its proponents.  Actually, “disciple” is probably a better a better word for the truly-committed gold investor.  More than any other asset class, gold tends to create a quasi-religious cult around itself.  An investor might buy a stock.  But they believe in gold. Unfortunately, gold is often the god...Read More

The Mises Institute, dedicated to “proceeding ever more boldly against evil,” appears to take issue with some of my comments on gold ($GLD $GC_F): Charles Sizemore, CFA, wrote back in June, “Gold today is as risky as tech stocks in 1999 and Miami condos in 2005, and the arguments supporting its rise are every bit...Read More

Gold prices topped $1,500 per ounce yesterday, just days after Standard & Poor’s roiled the equity and bond markets by lowering its outlook on the AAA credit rating of the U.S. government. After a decade in which stocks went nowhere and the U.S. dollar lost value to every world currency except the Zimbabwean dollar, many...Read More