Which of these best defines your thinking during periods when it seems failure is the likely option?

Your answer will define how you react to my recommendation that you use today’s low gold prices as a buying opportunity.

Those who see gold as a faded commodity investment with little future have already cut bait … and probably stopped reading at the end of the last paragraph.

Those who see the world as a particularly dicey joint reflexively understand what I’m talking about and are already buying gold. You can stop reading; you’re already on the winning team.

Instead, today’s dispatch is for the fence-sitters weighing whether to own gold in preparation for what’s to come … or whether to disregard the metal as nothing more than fodder for those crazy gold bugs to gnaw on. It’s a confusing world out there. Some say gold is going to $700 (and they might be right, temporarily), and others say gold will shoot to $10,000 (and they might be right, temporarily).

I’m in the middle. And when I tell you why, I hope you see the wisdom of why you should join me there, too.

Before we begin, a small but relevant preamble to explain who else is sitting in the audience today.

Seems lots of Americans are worrying a blue streak, even though we’re told by the media that “all is copacetic” in the land of milk and honey — unless, of course, you’re lactose intolerant and a diabetic.

Through the first half of the year, the metals department for a $24 billion U.S. bank was a net seller of gold, as everyday investors reduced their gold holdings. But since mid-June, sales of allocated gold (physical gold the bank holds in your name) is up 142%. Unallocated gold (physical gold held in a pool rather than in your name) is up 154%.