Gold is acting bubbly. Even so, some Barron's writers think that it may be a worthwhile hedge. I have some of the yellow stuff, via an exchange-traded fund, IAU (cute, huh, using the element symbol as a ticker that way, and adding the "I" for I-Shares) in customer accounts for that very reason. I hate gold! Did I ever mention that? It just lies there, and people smarter than me say that it is, adjusted for inflation, worth about what it was in 1946. Compare gold with the results shown in the next paragraph.
I went to an impressive Oppenheimer presentation at our local FPA chapter last week, and — speaking of 1946 — I think the idea was that if one had invested $100,000 in that year and not touched any of it since (hardly likely, since there would be taxes to pay and mouths to feed), that at the end of 2009 (I think it was 2009), the nest egg would be worth $63 million. We all had to guess at the number, and I was $13 million off.
