Posted on 11/06/2007 4:44:12 AM PST by ml/nj
LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Gold hit its highest price since January 1980, following record high oil prices which stoked inflation jitters.
The precious metal rose to as high as 819.93 usd per ounce, its highest price since the 1980 peak of 850 usd, just as London's Brent oil hit a record high of 92.36 usd per barrel.
(Excerpt) Read more at fxstreet.com ...
ML/NJ
Silver is being dragged much higher , too.
Should I sell my gold jewelry? I’m getting old. My kids don’t care about my jewelry...there’s not that much.
What do I know? I am older than dirt, and I am buying silver at this price.
....Bob
A few years ago, many folks game me the smartass oneliners when I disagreed with their new economic theory that gold was a dead investment. Now, my gold fund shows a 1,000 percent return. I wonder what they are getting.
The last man holding $100/bbl oil will take it in the shorts.
Many on FR have been dismissing gold all way up from $275. Gold was frequently discussed on the Market Wrapup threads back in the day. After a while people got sick of the constant bashing and moved over to Freedom4um.
The 'smart' money is getting hammered.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1900897/posts 9 /23/07
Gold is a terrible investment. Except for when it isn't. The gold bugs have been peddling, gold with the exact same arguments, with the exact same predictions of impending financial doom, since the last time gold was this high, more than a quarter of a century ago.
If you bought gold for $650 an ounce in 1980, congratulations! Gold is now over $800 an ounce. Of course, with inflation, it takes $1,644.64! to equal the purchasing power of $650 in 1980, so your real return on your 27 year investment is a loss of more than 50%.
Are there times when a person can make a killing in gold? Sure. Is investing in gold a highly speculative proposition? By definition. Volatility in the price of gold is what allows it to sometimes go up rapidly enough to generate a large short term profit. That same volatility allows the price to go down rapidly, creating a large short term loss.
Actually silver is just recovering from the post-Y2K sell-off. It should easily run up to around $35 even if the dollar and gold were to settle down, which cannot happen, due to the inflationary and investment limiting effects of current Fed policy.
Gold is never an investment.
Gold is a hedge against bad government, and interesting times (like right now). It's something that you exchange for something more useful when good government takes over. Look for $1800 gold by this time next year.
You could donate it to me...
Not many, but a loud and foolish few. Unfortunately, they were able to influence JimRob back about 5 years ago, and that's how we lost the clear thinking voice of RobNoel (he hasen't posted since 2002)
The anti-gold squawkers will disappear in the very near future; hopefully never to be heard again.
But you’d just hide all that lovely stuff under the bed...
I agree it’s not an investment. I think of it either as a speculation (for the short/mid term) or a hedge (for the very long term). People who dismiss gold always use 1979-1980 as their base period. How about we compare gold and the Nasdaq and use 2000 as our base?
Interesting you picked a $650 date instead of 10 years ago, when gold was at $335 or so.
You can manipulate figures anyway you want.
.....Bob
You can make the same arguments about nearly anything, if you pick and choose the times. Predictions of financial doom are not illogical in our “not so free” world markets where immense power and control is exercised from behind hidden veils to the benefit of specialized political objectives. In the long run, it is very logical that investors lose confidence in traditional investments which they see being cheapened by irresponsible leadership. Over the long run, there was never any question that the US Dollar would fall. And, it was a certainty, that gold would rise when the dollar fell. I was told to use gold as an insurance policy to insure against a crashing dollar. If the dollar did not fall, then the lost appreciation and interest could be viewed as the insurance premium. When the eventually dollar tanked, then the gold appreciation would be like the insurance payout. So far, it has worked perfectly.
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