A Look Back

The year gave us a bit of a roller-coaster ride (not too bad) but it seems we're ending up on the up side of things. I ended up the year selling stock in three out of the four accounts I have, and the other one had sold some the month before. Cathy's account had the first sale since opening it in April, and My IRA account has sold some in 3 of the last four months. It's definitely a harvest season for the market. I won't, and can't really say how long this will last, but it doesn't matter. If it keeps going up, we'll keep selling stock and stockpiling cash, because one thing I can say with full confidence, it won't last forever.

Something that came up this last month that I thought was worth mentioning, is how many of the guys that I get emails from had things to say about the economy...and by economy, I'm talking about the state of our currency. Some of these guys are chucking their whole business and starting a campaign to tell people how to safeguard themselves from the coming upheaval we are about to see with the dollar. They feel this is only the beginning of the rise in precious metal prices, mainly because the dollar will lose so much of it's value. They are calling for hyper-inflation because other countries are going to stop lending to us. This is a simplified version of what these guys are saying, but I'm hearing it from a few different sources, and that I feel is a bit disturbing. It also got me thinking about how all these 'send your gold in and we'll give you cash' ads are going on.

I decided to take a bit of my cash and put it into a silver ETF (exchange-traded fund.) I figure silver will never go to zero, and if this turns out to be even remotely true, I'll have a hedge. I figure periodically I'll invest up to half of my cash into the silver fund (the one I'm using is SLV, in case you were wondering.)

Anyway, Happy New Year everyone - I hope it is a good one. Be safe - see you next time!