A lot of finance commentators have poked fun at those who own Gold (aka 'Gold Bugs') over the years, likening them to members of a cult or religious group.
Articles such as '5 more reasons why investors shouldn’t worship gold right now' and 'Let’s Be Honest About Gold: It’s a Pet Rock' where the author concludes that owning Gold is "an act of faith", are recent examples of authors trying to portray Gold owners as devotees of the metal. This is nothing new though, one well known Gold hater, Joe Weisenthal, even wrote a post half a decade ago titled '9 Ways That Gold Is A Religion Masquerading As An Asset Class'.
One amusing aspect of all this Gold hating is that (when aggregated) much of it ironically resembles the same culture they are criticising. It has the same comradery, the same obsessiveness and the same unwavering faith (just in the opposite of what Gold stands for: fiat currencies, sensible government or other financial assets, with no allocation to those which are tangible).
Many Gold haters spend a great deal of time trying to convince anyone who will listen not to own Gold. They ridicule those who do own it and usually make no differentiation between those who allocate a small or large portion of their portfolio to Gold. They try and mold any argument for or against Gold to their own nonobjective viewpoint while claiming to be "asset agnostic" as if their view doesn't suffer from the same subjectivity as the rest of us.
Here are some recent examples of Gold hating from one of their favourite pulpits (Twitter).
Cullen Roche (speaks for itself):
Joe Weisenthal (retweeted this link to an August 6th article on the Gold crash costing Russia and China $5.4 Billion, when the price had already rebounded to around the pre-crash level.):
John Aziz (suggesting a price drop in Gold should result in investors who own the metal "rethinking the world", does that mean those who don't own Gold should have been rethinking the world when it was at US$1900?):
A lot of the Gold hating is less obvious than this (i.e. snarky tweets on Gold, that most would brush off as attempted humour, but a pattern can be identified when watching over time), but evidence of it exists across the feeds of many Twitter finance 'elites'. It also flooded the mainstream media over July and early August (marking a significant bottom?) until the price started to rise again.
I agree Gold is like a religion to some owners (but not all of them as the Gold haters would have you believe), but even though that's the case, wouldn't it be rational
for investors (who recognise this fanatical group of Gold owners and buyers) to hold a position in the metal knowing of this devout participation in the market? Wouldn't it also be rational to own Gold knowing there are billions of people living in a society with deep cultural ties (many based around religion) to
the metal and who are likely to be the same people whose wealth is set to increase the most
over coming decades?
For
me owning Gold is more of an atheistic position (for the most part, among other reasons). Disbelief (or lack of faith) in governments being capable of navigating the excessive debt that's built up in the financial system today to a growth model moving forward without a significant reset, mass default, global crash to restore some resemblance of sustainability. I think Gold will be one of few assets to benefit from such an event or environment so a healthy allocation is warranted.
Gold Bless,
Bullion Baron.
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