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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold & Gold Stock Analysis
GLD 393.24+1.1%Dec 11 4:00 PM EST

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From: hdl2/21/2013 9:15:43 AM
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  • Howard Marks: There is Nothing Intelligent to be Said About Gold 02/21/2013 1:26 AM Cullen Roche 2 comments
    I found this quote by Howard Marks rather appropriate given the fact that gold is getting hammered in recent weeks and it’s only fair that I pile on. In a February 2nd interview Marks said:

    “There is nothing intelligent to be said about gold. Nobody can tell you the right price for an ounce of gold. People will tell you it should go up or go down. To make any intelligent statements about investments you have to know what the right price is. You can’t do that with an asset like gold, which doesn’t produce any cash flow. So you can buy it out of superstition or ignore it because you are an atheist but you cannot buy it with an analytical foundation.”



    Gold is a hedge. Insurance. Not a core piece of a portfolio and certainly not something you should construct your monetary life around. I am probably less pessimistic about the role of gold in a portfolio than Marks is, but I do think this is a crucial understanding. Assets without cash flows cannot be the centerpiece of a portfolio not only because they are difficult to value, but because they cannot be relied upon to protect one’s portfolio against the risk of permanent loss.

    At the end of the day, the primary goal of a savings portfolio is allocating that savings in a manner that protects against the risk of permanent loss and the loss of purchasing power in a manner that is consistent with generating reasonable risk adjusted returns. See here for more on “the myth of investing” and proper portfolio construction.




    Cullen RocheMr. Roche is the Founder of Orcam Financial Group, LLC. Orcam is a financial services firm offering research, private advisory, institutional consulting and educational services.



    2 Comments

    Ryan Melvey
    02/21/2013 at 1:47 AM
    I think lots of bottoms up guys spend so much time trying to find a discrepancy between price and value that they ignore macro based diversification. Gold has plenty of drivers that can explain its returns, most notably real interests for the world’s reserve currency.


    Reply



    Alberto
    02/21/2013 at 3:32 AM
    In theory Mr. Roche is right here but 1) the insurance premium to pay is particularly difficult or impossibile to evaluete in this case; there are no statistics that can help like when buying/selling a car or life insurance 2) I’ve spent a respectable part of my life in evalueting cash flows and I can assure you that there is nothing more uncertain than that, expecially now and for big firms. Their balance sheets are overly complex and full of tricks (a nice name for “frauds”). So cash flow of what ? The only one cash flow you can predict is from treasuries. This is a link to one of the many stories (and certainly not the bigger one) that shows my point:

    brontecapital.blogspot.it


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