5DG, look at the long-term buy-and-hold returns for gold and get back to us.
Equities have beaten it by multiple percents over the long haul.
As a currency for exchange, sure, use it all you want, but as an Investment, you've got to be a fool to believe it's better than any other commodity! When the price is high, mines are reopened and supplies rush to market and the price collapses and those mines become unprofitable and close again, cutting supply and restarting the cycle!
Look at the Demand for Gold in the world market and you'll see that one of the only places where demand is increasing is in the jewelry market, primarily in India, and its growth isn't enough to make gold appreciate enough, in total, as an INVESTMENT!

Or you can stick with your own beliefs. I have no gold holdings in my IRAs, thanks to my money manager's wisdom, and after paying their fees AND withdrawing principle for living expenses above SocSec, our IRAs have been being Depleted, on average, about 1% per year for nearly 12 years.
Not a bad trend, eh? And our withdrawals so far have approached about 3.4M$ (that's three-fourths of a Million Dollars) so I think I've got some good history to back me up.

Best of luck with your investments.
But don't believer anything Ken Fisher's written...

Tell that to the gold-bugs who disagree...
I trust my financial money-managers... :)

finally a positive article stating why one should not invest in gold, said much better than I have stated in the past.

True, Herb, and if you follow MarketMinder.com, you can continually read about their responses to money newsletters that say the world's economy is tanking.
By their measurements, and they tell you what their measures are... today, the 'world economy' is growing.
Of course, if you're of another Economic Religion (or making money publishing economic-apocalypse newsletters), that will make no difference to you. :)

I tried to warn ya... :(

True: short term trading gains can definitely be made, but long-term investment potential is mediocre at best, compared to equity-holding.
If you want to trade gold on its per-oz value, buy during gluts and sell during shortages.
Follow the historical cycle.

Black, you've been misled by someone...
Fisher is Little Else BUT a Historian!
Read any of his books and discover that...

As soon as I began reading your post, Mad Max immediately came to mind.
Gold was pretty irrelevant. Gasoline and whiskey were much more popular for trade!
:)

Before I'll listen to Ken Fisher, I'll listen to 5,000 years of history.

Gold is NOT an "investment." Gold is MONEY. Comparing gold to stocks and bonds is like comparing cash to stocks and bonds. Neither one will give you a return. Compare gold to cash, and you'll be onto something.

More bellicose tripe from the gold-haters. Their own chart disproves their putrid thesis. If gold lacks inherent value, why does it cost so much per ounce? You can make beautiful objects from gold. What can you make from paper currency? What were GM bondholders left with, when the Obaminestas took over that company? To their specious claim regarding market-timing, the same is true of all investments. Anyone buy tech stocks in 2000 and ride that pony over the cliff in 2001? How long did it take to recover? There is a reason Saint Ayn made gold the monetary currency of the Gulch.

very interesting. . Thank You! -- j
.

It long ago occurred to Old Dino that in a post-apocalyptic environment precious metals, gems, money in any form and such things as big name art and very rare antiques may have no value at all.
Produce garden seeds should come to be valued as precious.
Barter would be the only civilized trade. What is bartered should be essentially medieval save for such things as motorized vehicles, modern fuel and firearms plus ammo.
Crossbows big and small are in Mad Max movies. Someone could do very well making crossbows and bartering them to fill essential needs and to occasionally get something fun like a boomerang for junior to practice with. .

Gold does not generate wealth, and in times of dire straits and shortages, its perceived value plummets. While it sounds like a joke to all except the WTSHTF folks, lead (in the form of the most common types of ammunition) is a much more valuable medium of exchange.

Short of an apocalyptic event, real estate still remains a strong investment target. Technology can be an explosive growth investment, if done with an educated eye. Robotics, in all its forms, will be very strong, pushed by blind union favoritism and bloated minimum wages.

Gold is also used in electronics. If gold is down it also means electronic manufacturing is down.

I'm not unhappy with the price increase of the eighty Mexican 50 Pesos I got in 1969 for $55 each.

People often forget that gold is a commodity and as such is subject to the rise and falls experienced by and such thing. The reason people keep gold is the belief that if the world's economies fail and paper monies become worthless, gold and silver will be the medium of exchange until the world economies rebound. But then, if the economies crash to the point where paper money is worth less than newsprint, what will you be able to buy with it? Such a drastic fall of money value would cause production to grind to a halt. Barter might work for a while, but until production gets back, gold will be even more useless than many other commodities. You cannot eat gold, clothe yourself in it, or shelter yourself with it. Let us just hope that sanity prevails and it doesn't come to that.

".and I wonder what post-apocalyptic life would be like if everyone, or even 'the smart ones' had lots of gold in their hoards."
The value of a medium of exchange is in the stuff you exchange, that you can get it without mutual coincidence of wants. I can turn circuit boards into groceries without finding a grocery store in need of circuit boards. If the grocery store and my lab get ransacked because there's a disaster an no policing, the problem is a lack of stuff to trade, not the the lack of a medium of exchange.

It's still a more valuable medium of exchange than paper money and that is what all the gold rhetoric is about in reality.
Of course there are those looking for short gain profits in selling gold as well and using our debt/fiat currency to their advantage.

..and I wonder what post-apocalyptic life would be like if everyone, or even 'the smart ones' had lots of gold in their hoards.
It's only got 'value' if the seller of the goods you want or need would like to trade it with you. Since it's scarce (you can't print your own very easily,) it's harder to debase as a 'currency,' so that might be a way to 'value' it under those conditions.
But couldn't the same be said of other hard-to-mine metals or scarce items?
Just wondering. I've often pictured the guy with the gold either being held up by robbers and thus rendered 'penniless' or the seller demanding excessive amounts of gold in trade.

Whatever... I'd probably be one of the first to starve, die or be killed in that kind of world, anyway... and that might be preferable to trying to rebuild it.

" the idea that it is a Store Of Value or something that's Unique is a fallacy."
I agree completely. Comparable goods and service are worth about the same throughout time, within an order of magnitude. (The nature of goods and services change over time, though, so it's hard to compare.) So if you had to bury value without management for hundreds of years, precious metals would be the way to go. It's not a practical store of value within a human lifetime. It's fine to hold some of it as a hedge against bad times, but as the article correctly says there's nothing magic about it.

If you research or read Ken Fisher or MarketMinder, you'll see that their opinion is that gold is a commodity and like virtually all other commodities, the idea that it is a Store Of Value or something that's Unique is a fallacy.
Its value is a function of supply and demand; demand isn't growing as fast as inflation and most of the demand is for jewelry and some electronics' metal coatings.
When the supply decreases, the price goes up, mines reopen, supplies increase and prices drop, then mines close, supplies decrease, the market price goes up again and the cycle repeats.
I really suggest you consider their counterpoint against the MSM and Financial Newsletter Publishers' views.
Consider, too, the long-term return on gold!

Cheers, and good luck investing.
We've been with Fisher with them managing our IRAs for nearly twelve years, and after paying fees and withdrawing about 3/4M$ over that period, our total holdings there have dropped, on average, about 1% Per Year.
And virtually none of the investments are in any precious metals.
Just sayin'...

A recent Fed Appeals Court ruling has reaffirmed a joint suit against the many banks/financial groups involved in the identified LIBOR price fixing of recent years, though no one's yet found (or is likely to) certain evidence of prior years (or decades) of gold price fixing from the same groups/banks.

The author uses the already identified prices from the LIBOR price fixing as justification for his argument.

I think it would have been of interest to try and find out what the price of gold and the gold/silver ratio would have done without the price fixing that's been identified and from that interpolate probable/possible pricing back through the 80's

A proper money based on Gold and Silver would indeed have physical Gold as a sound inflation protector. As such, Gold wouldn't be a short term investment, other than Gold production in the form of investment with the producer.

Not necessarily. From whence did you infer that?
:)

Thus speaks those that favor not prosecuting the LIBOR conspirators.