I Still Believe Gold Is In A Bubble

The excitement hasn't exactly quieted down yet. People are still very much sure that gold is the investment to hold right now. I think they are half-right in their thinking. Gold will continue to hold value over time. I think that's fairly indisputable. However, I'm inclined to believe that the current price of an ounce of gold is inflated by a lackluster economy in not just the U.S., but across the world, a lagging dollar, and all of the uncertainty that those two things have on people's confidence in paper currencies for which there is no tangible backing for.

Simply put, gold is the most recent example of a bubble in play, and like all bubbles, it is going to burst one day. It's only a question of when.

There are telltale signs of this. For one thing, there are standalone operations that have set up shop in strip malls, and kiosks have even been opened up in the bigger malls. Pawn shops have become major operations just from buying used gold to be sold and melted down and resold to eager buyers. People are flocking to everything gold, and they are turning their attics and basements upside down trying to find anything gold that they can sell.

It's the crazy, in my opinion, that marks the end of a bubble. When oil was going through the roof, people in the know started shouting out that the price for a barrel of oil would surpass $500. An outfit formed that would sell gasoline at today's price that could be used when tomorrow's price went higher. That business tanked. It was another example of the crazy. Oil crashed. When housing boomed and people began getting crazy, refinancing over and over and taking out more and more money each time, buying lavish vacation homes, boats, cars, and anything else their hearts desired. Housing crashed. When the Internet was at its height and people began talking about 'the new economy,' and how business could be transformed, not needing a penny of any real revenue to make it big, and wages were being replaced by stock options and straight shares of company stock, this was the crazy. The Internet boom crashed.

Granted, gold may not be quite on scale with these other bubbles. But with people converting a lot of their dollars to gold, it still will have an impact. And it's still a bubble. It will still burst like all bubbles ultimately do. My only suggestion is to proceed with caution.

Links of Interest

Gold Market, Investing in Gold
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