Where It Stops, Nobody Knows: The Historic Buying Opportunity of Gold and Silver in Freefall

If you are a dedicated precious metals investor, you might be sick and tired of being told to be happy about falling prices.

You don’t want to hear that Warren Buffett famously opined that the one and only time he wanted to see a stock price rise was immediately prior to selling it, since once he had determined an equity was undervalued, further price declines simply meant an opportunity to add great value at a cheaper price than he was able to before.

You want to take the author of the next article you see perkily discussing the wisdom of dollar-cost averaging and throw them down an abandoned gold mine shaft.

Bear with me.

To say current commodity prices represent a “buying opportunity” dramatically understates the case. To find a time when gold and silver prices were this cheap relative to stocks, you have to go back two generations.

The fall from the most recent apex on this chart, in 2008, has been brutal. We are beyond “testing the patience” of gold and silver investors. We are firmly into precious-metals-investment-as-waterboarding territory.

But this (and I’ll just hide behind this big rock over here while I say this) is the anguish from which all-time great investments are born. The more insane, masochistic, pointless it feels to buy…the better buy it almost invariably turns out to be.

Investing directly opposite your emotions, right into the teeth of your frustration, anger, even despair…this is the behavior that separates long-term successful investors from those who allow these emotions to dictate their investment decisions. Also known as investors who buy high, sell low, and lose money over the long term.

It’s okay. Shoot the messenger if you want (figuratively, please). Curse me out and yell at your computer screen. Use expletives. Jump up and down. Let it out.

Then buy.