Is It Time to Buy Gold?

The answer to that question is I don’t know. There are lots of advertisements and commentators advocating to buy gold (and/or silver). They assert that some event or some government is doing this-or-that and it will affect its price. Its amusing how they map some event to a change in price of gold, silver, stocks, bonds, various currencies. According to them this event causes that outcome. When I use the word “map”, I mean cause-and-effect (causations) and correlations.

For example, as soon as October, here is former Republican congressman and libertarian firebrand Ron Paul.

“If our markets are down 25 percent and gold is up 50 percent it wouldn’t be a total shock to me,” said Paul recently on CNBC program Futures Now.

I just look at prices and charts. Gold hit a low price $255.80 per ounce in 2001 then rallied for ten years, reaching $1,923.70 in September, 2011. Since that peak it fell for six years reaching a low of $1,045.40 in November, 2015. It then rose to $1,377.50 in July, 2016, then fell to $1,124.30 in December, 2016. Now its at $1,209.70.

The mind automatically searches for events during that time. US President Bush, 9-11 terrorist attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now the broader Middle East, the widening globalization of economies, the financial meltdown of 2008, President Obama, Brexit (Great Britain voted to leave the European Union), then the surprise election of now President Trump. The price of gold jumped after Great Britain voted to leave the European Union, hit the aforementioned high in July, 2016 but then fell again. It didn’t jump after Donald Trump beat favorite Hillary Clinton. Good luck trying to map those events to the price of gold.

If you think, “its a dangerous world out there”, that does not cut it either. Its always been. There’s always something to worry about. Why have stock markets rallied so high in such a dangerous world? The S&P 500 US stock market index rallied more than 200 percent during President Obama’s two terms. And during that time government imposed a lot of economic regulations and taxes on the American people. Yet stocks rose.

If you want to buy gold, you can do so through this convenient interface to eBay’s offerings. That link has all different sizes and shapes. Yes, you can buy gold on eBay using credit card and Paypal. This link narrows down gold for between $25 and $250.