There’s something worse than giving up at the bottom…

There’s something worse than watching prices fall as you continue to add on the way down…

It’s giving up “three feet from gold,” when if you had just stuck it out a bit longer, things might have turned your way.

This tendency is part and parcel of human nature, and its effect is not to be underestimated. Way back in 1938, Napoleon Hill wrote about it in the classic book, Think and Grow Rich. Consider what his research uncovered. Said he:

More than five hundred of the most successful men the country has ever known, told the author (Napoleon Hill) that their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is within reach.

When the precious metals make a turn to the upside that really holds, one of two things is going to happen. Either the price trades sideways for awhile, building higher highs and higher lows into a bona fide uptrend, or there will be a trident spike that shocks everyone, present company included.

Either way, we’ve been so conditioned to expect market failures to the upside into overhead ceilings that almost no one will believe it when things change.

They will wait for the price of silver to rise where they hope and expect it to go before they jump in (above $20, $26 or $40?). They may sell aggressively into each rise until they end up with little or no holdings. Then the mostly empty bullish train will really leave the station, with the “parade crowd” standing forlornly at the gate, wondering what went wrong.

Of course, no one can predict the future, and the price of silver might stop at say, $25. But by doing your homework and looking at the evidence – from the very accurate to the not-so-helpful – you’ll be on the way toward making the right decision… for you.