Using as his template a rebuttal of an Money Magazine article skeptical about gold, Bill Bonner reminds us that gold as an investment has not seeped into the popular culture yet. Money calls attention to a Saturday Night Live skit where mainland China’s President Hu Jintao (played by Bill Hader) bemoans not listening to Glenn Beck and buying gold. As Bonner notes, that's only one example. More to the point: when real estate and tech stocks were in a bubble, most everyone knew of at least one guy who had a story about making hand over fist with them. That's far from the case now.
Interestingly, Money has this suggestion: using 1% of portfolio money to buy long-shot call options on gold as a bet on a real parabolic spike. Bonner dumps on the idea as providing inadequate protection for the 99% of the portfolio left...even if the option holder strikes it lucky before the options expire. Should gold skyrocket, a lot of other investments would go down a fair bit.
(Which, of course, explains why gold is largely pooh-poohed by mainstream financial figures until that parabolic bubble gets rolling. Who wants to push an asset whose story crimps the pushing of more popular mainstay assets, like debt and equities?)
No comments:
Post a Comment