[PsyOp]

Thanks for the explanation. That clarifies a lot for me. Could you elaborate on what you said about gold prices. It is my belief that we will be seeing huge inflationary pressures over the next several years which should push gold and silver prices much higher than they are now.

In fact, they should have already gone much higher, but have been suppressed I understand because of dumping of large gold and silver assets even while there are shortages of small denomination gold and silver in the form of coins and trade rounds. (I collect and invest in both).

Am I wrong? What is your opinion?

[palmer]

Dumping is understandable because a great deal of the inflationary speculation last spring was in precious metals and commodities. The inflation versus deflation debate is a bit of a red herring, there is really both with the psychology mixed together in different phases.

Gold has two strikes against it right now, (1) speculators are involved (dumping it wholesale last fall in the credit squeeze) and (2) it is fundamentally worthless.

Gold also has two things going for it, (1) speculators want to buy it and the govt wants to give them cheap credit to do that and (2) it's the only thing that can hold value in a deflation (when nobody wants commodities) and inflation (when paper money is worthless)

So you need to buy and hold for value, but buy and sell for speculation. If you have enough rounds and coins for value, then try an ETF or some mining shares, but remember to buy those as they drop and sell as they rise.

[palmer]

I should add that I would consider the PPT to be speculators, but with a different motive and time horizon. They mainly want to capture profits when it helps them dampen out a speculative bubble. They probably buy the stuff back when the market is quiet, and have other funding sources to sell short when they need to.