You Can't Eat Gold

A former partner of mine got married over the weekend to a former lover from his youth. Separated by tides of life that kept them apart for a couple of decades, against all odds their paths once again crossed, resulting in a beautiful ceremony that took place, most dramatically, in a tent in the middle of a raging storm.

The less sentimental among you will be pleased to know that I'm not planning on waxing lyrically about love and marriage and all that. Instead, I'll share a couple of stories from the wedding, as they seemed particularly revealing to me, and maybe to you too.

The first was a conversation with a mutual friend of the groom whom I hadn't seen in a number of years. I had heard he'd moved on from a previous sales job in the ski business to a position as a broker at a major brokerage house, but we hadn't had more than a passing conversation until we washed up next to each other at the wedding.

Since he knows I am involved in the research business, he steered the conversation toward investment markets, giving me an opening to do a little on-the-ground research. Specifically, I asked him if he or his clients were invested in gold or gold stocks. "Nope," he said with a cheerful broker's smile, adding, "You can't eat gold."

"Err, excuse me, can you repeat that?" I said (or words to that effect).

"You know, like something of value, like vegetables – you can't eat gold," he explained somewhat haltingly.

"Ah, you must have heard Buffett's quote about gold not being a productive asset," I said aloud while thinking maybe he hadn't paid very close attention when his branch manager had been trying to brief him on how to answer clients looking to buy gold.

"Do you know the history of Buffett's anti-gold stance?" I asked.

Blank but friendly stare.

"Well, as I figure it," I continued, "Buffett's mentor was Benjamin Graham, who only really advocated two asset classes during his career: stocks and bonds. The idea being that depending on relative valuations, a portfolio should be allocated between stocks and bonds in varying percentages."

"Uh-huh," he said, his handsome smile failing to mask that he had only the vaguest idea what I was talking about.

"In any event, the reason that Graham – who had a huge affect on how Wall Street views portfolio allocation – never bothered with gold was because throughout virtually his entire career, it was illegal to own."

"Gold was illegal to own?"

"Yep, Roosevelt banned it, which was why Graham never included it in his allocations. But since gold has again been legal to own, there have been two distinct periods when gold was the far better asset class than either stocks or bonds. We are currently in just such a period, which is why the performance of gold has completely trashed even that of Buffett over the last decade."

"Get out of town! It's outperformed Buffett? Really?"

"Yes."

"Well, that may be, but I always tell my customers, you can't eat gold, and you can't go wrong with a dividend-paying stock."

Seeing that further discourse on the topic was going to be unproductive, the talk quickly turned to the weather and then I drifted away.

Now don't get me wrong, this is an entirely nice young fellow. But that he has been working for a major brokerage house – actually advising his clients on where to put their money – for over eight years now and clearly didn't know a thing about gold or, as far as I could tell, any aspect of investing other than parroting the stock touts his brokerage firm gives him, was big- time eye-opening.

Is gold in a bubble? Hardly. But I'll sure know when it is – and that will be when this fellow calls me up to ask for a hot tip.

The mainstream media continue to bash gold, warning that investors in the yellow metal are in danger of enduring a nasty correction. Yesterday, for example, CNBC ran an article titled "Is Gold on the Edge of a Violent Turndown?" in which Yoni Jacobs, chief investment strategist at Chart Prophet Capital, said gold could drop to $700 an ounce.

Central banks apparently disagree with this assessment, as they have increased their gold hoards by 400 metric tons in the 12 months through March 31, 2012, up from 156 tons during the prior year. We strongly believe investors should follow the lead of central banks, and to help those new to the gold market, we've created a free special report that reveals the three best ways to invest in gold.