Today's plunge in gold prices reinforces my broad, long-term investment strategy.
Gold plunged for the second straight day Monday, dropping more than 8% at midday in what was shaping up as the metal's biggest one-day percentage decline in 30 years. ..."Everybody that's bought for the past two years, since April 2011, is losing money," said Ira Epstein, director of the Ira Epstein division at the Linn Group futures brokerage. "It's a sea of red," he said.
There's nothing magical about gold, but the fact that so many people treat it like a magic totem is enough to scare me away. Gold's movement is almost entirely irrational, so why would you want to play that game?
At least if you buy actual gold and maintain physical possession you can theoretically use it to buy things after the total collapse of global civilization, but what's the point in buying pieces of paper that say you own gold in someone else's vault? It's voodoo.
