The Retirement Investor’s Last Line Of Defense

The one thing a retired person has to do that most of us ignore in our younger years is have a firm plan in place for market corrections.

Most of us do not have the time to recover from a big loss.

And from my perspective, the markets so far in 2015 have been showing all the signs of another rough period in our future:

  • Stocks dropped 1,000 points from their record high and were down 800 points in July alone.
  • The market is riddled with the “topped-out jitters” and has been for months.
  • The bond market is being hit by threats of higher rates, a liquidity crunch and tumbling commodity prices.
  • Oil analysts are split between $35 and $75 a barrel on their short-term projections for crude – a wide spread that's driving the oil markets crazy.
  • Morgan Stanley is telling us cheap oil, which is usually good for the economy, is actually hurting it. The drop in the number of drilling rigs is starting to add up in the negative column.
  • Add in the chaos in the Middle East, Greece and the EU, as well as China's weakness, and you have a pretty good argument for a bad – or at least uncertain – near term.
  • Remember, uncertainty drives markets down as much as bad news ever has.

    All of these rough spots tell the contrarian in me that it's time to take another look at gold.

    A Tough Time for Gold

    The yellow stone is touted as the “safe harbor” and is supposed to shine during bad times, like an economic crisis, a war, a period of or a drop in the market. But despite the accumulating factors that normally drive gold up, it has been stubbornly sitting at almost $900 an ounce below its high.

    That's a 47% disparity. No one wants it.

    A recent report shows that only 10% of investors are bullish on gold and, according to our sources, investors are short 16 million ounces of gold. The long-term average going back to 1995 is just 3.9 million ounces.

    In my 30 years in the market, I've learned that whenever everyone is as negative and as dead-set against something as they are against gold right now, it is time to take another look.

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