Gold Is Up

Gold is up to over $550 an ounce. Nuts. Just when I was thinking about buying some more, the price spiked on me to $450, and it's been going up since. It's all this damned economic uncertainty that had me looking to buy more too. Silver is up considerably too. Looks like the stock market is too shaky for some investors. Almost all of my stocks are up, however....

Sobering commentary about the U.S. economy in an article on Kitco. On the other hand, there's bogus price target article there, too, so this must be taken with a grain of salt. (Takedown: First of all, the x-axis is inconsistent: there are multiple entries per year as well as omitted years. Second, there is no statistical support in that graph for a long upswing. From the bottom of the last cycle in 2001, gold prices were increasing at $25/yr. Lately it's been more, so the extrapolation is by no means linear. Even if it were linear, there's no guarantee how long the upswing would continue. The thing that bugs me about gold investment is that there's a lot of unreliable commentary made about it. That's not to say it doesn't happen on Wall Street, of course, but they tend to be more rigorous with their graphs.)

There's also an article on MarketWatch regarding the gold prices. One thing I never understood was why investors, both individual and institutional, insist on buying issues of things that were already well into their ascent upward. That just means they missed the boat, and may be buying at prices too high. Gold is different from typical paper securities, I suppose, in that it has the attractiveness of usefulness even in the face of economic collapse.

Well, with the volatility of the gold price lately, I'm sure there's money to be made in timing the short cycles.