It’s no secret that precious metals historically been given short shrift by a financial services industry singularly devoted to its paper assets. Often dismissed on the basis of simple-minded reasoning (“gold and silver don’t make anything,” etc.), metals tend to be pejoratively viewed by far too many as outlier assets favored by fringe individuals who buy them in preparation for an imagined time when society wholly disintegrates. Particularly revealing in this day and age is their categorization as “alternative” assets, ultra-ironic considering metals have been prized for millennia as mediums of exchange, stores of value and the quintessential symbols of wealth.
And considering, as well, that they’re not made of paper…like their conventional counterparts.
In truth, precious metals have the capacity to add value to a portfolio in a way the traditional financial services community doesn’t always like to admit. That value is rooted in many factors, including metals’ lack of counterparty risk, their capacity to preserve the financial sovereignty of those who possess them, their resistance to not only their own debasement but the debasement of fiat currency, and their historical tendency to remain largely uncorrelated to conventional assets and popular financial-market indexes; a “non-relationship” which affords metals – particularly gold – the opportunity to serve investors as hedge assets as well as instruments through which to realize effective diversification.
These features are growing ever more compelling as the global environment becomes increasingly complex and precarious. A swirling vortex of economic, fiscal and geopolitical uncertainty…catalyzed by a wealth of macro drivers including deglobalization, debt and dollar instability…is proving to be an especially daunting challenge for investors at all levels – including central banks, which now are in their 16th consecutive year as net purchasers of gold.
You get the picture.
As for who I am, I’ll keep it at the Reader’s Digest version.
I was born and raised in the Greater Boston area. Following military service, I went on to graduate from Stetson University with a BA degree in psychology. Some years later, I graduated with honors from American Military University, earning an MA in military studies with a concentration in asymmetrical warfare.
Professionally, I spent decades working as a principal on behalf of broker-dealers and registered investment advisers, including my own, before exiting the industry to focus on the far more solitary – but endlessly satisfying – pursuits of writing and research.
And, yes, I love – and largely live – to train. Physical conditioning provides buoyancy in just about every way imaginable.
Welcome, my friends.
The Gold Strategist 