I was reading a post by Martin Armstrong called Gold and the Changing Fundamentals and in it he published a question from an email sent by a reader:

“Mr. Armstrong; You are obviously the person worth listening to when it comes to gold. Every fundamental these people have argued to support gold has proven completely false. Confusion in gold is really very high. You have to be really stupid at this point to listen to this nonsense. Can you express any opinion on gold?”

“These people” the emailer is talking about are obviously the gold “community” at large and the “gold analyst” (ha ha ha, gold analyst; hi, I am a gold analyst; I analyze a piece of rock that does nothing whatsoever) community in particular. First of all, anyone who belongs to a community is already implicitly sworn in as biased. Secondly, a gold analyst is just another term for gold-obsessed idealist who really wants you to be obsessed with it too.

Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of market and gold mining analysts very much worth their salt. Within a market analyst’s analysis there is goldanalysis, just as there is tin, hogs, corn and global equities analysis. Within a mining analyst’s work is the ability to help us pick real companies in which to invest and avoid the plentiful scams out there. I have two who I trust through our long-term relationships; Inca Kola News (IKN) and a personal contact who is not public (although I think he should be). You should either do intensive fundamental work or have access to reputable sources for it.

But the surest way to spot one of the promoters that Marty often rails about is their singular, dogmatic focus on a piece of metal that pays no dividend, is no one’s liability and basically does nothing. There is literally a world of other assets and markets orbiting around the shiny rock in the middle, which does nothing other than get marked up in times of monetary and systemic anxiety and marked down when all’s seemingly just swell.