BAA’s Story

Gold Guru and Precious Metals Legend

Hi Folks, welcome to BAA_BAA’s weblog.

BAA_BAA is on a mission to inform people about Gold, Silver and other precious metals.

Around 10 years ago when the tech bubble was about to burst, a well meaning colleague suggested to me to “buy some of this gold mining stock, it’ll go to the moon!” So I did. This was my one and only technique for selecting stocks to invest my hard earned money in and despite having been burned before; I was leaping in again completely and utterly uninformed.

Well, that stock was already on its return journey from the moon, as I watched it scorch my savings on re-entry to the atmosphere and crash land back on Earth in about April 2000. Wow, was I mad! Not with my colleague, but with myself! I realised that I had lost a lot of money taking a bet on something I knew absolutely nothing about. I could have picked a horse in the local derby and have done better!

So while I was still smarting from my significant losses, I decided once and for all that I would treat myself to an education in stocks, options and gold. It was a gold mining stock after all and even I could see that although Gold had declined for 22 years into 2001, it appeared to be making a fresh start so surely there was some opportunity in there somewhere?

That was the beginning of a long learning curve, way long and it never ends! Who would have believed that stocks and options would be easy to get to grips with relatively speaking, compared with Gold and Silver both of which seemed to be inextricably linked to just about everything that has some quotient of stored value and where there is value there is avarice power and greed. There’s also hope, the hopeful and the hopeless.

I learnt that for over 5000 years mankind has used the unique qualities of Gold to represent value and wealth. Initially it was hoarded by the powerful because of its attractive beauty. Later it was used as money, an alternative to barter. Then the Gold was held in storage by the issuer of the currency and the medium of the currency changed to base metals and paper, until modern times.

Imagine my surprise to find out that only in the past century has mankind decided that they no longer need the same value of Gold as the national currency on issue! Indeed, all governments (who are put in place by the royals) needed was the promise to redeem the paper money because as we all know, you can trust government. Well, you can trust government to tax current and future generations, so governments have an ability to repay the debt represented by all the money and credit on issuance.

My own studies of the History of Money and the role of Gold in ancient and modern society have led me to many horrid and depressing stories of greed, lust, power, avarice. I learnt that in fact the entire world still wanted gold, only that the masters of money had figured out a way to not require it to create a financial system.

I was perplexed that the more I learnt about Gold and Silver, the less I seemed to be able to do about all the ills and problems that go with it. Until one day I woke up and realised in an epiphany that it wasn’t about me saving the world or undoing the wrongs of the past, or anything like that.

My epiphany amounted to three core realisations:

a) Gold is perhaps the most complex of all asset classes and perhaps impossible to know everything there is to know about it; but the knowledge is out there and accessible if you make the effort to look. Fundamental and technical analysis skills are essential.

b) It was, is and will be all about ME. One cannot save the world’s economic woes and endless academic discussion on it doesn’t change a thing. Participating in precious metals as an asset / investment / insurance class is very personal and requires a clear understanding of ones own circumstances and those of the metals themselves.

c) I felt a duty to inform people as broadly as possible about what I knew. The internet is a tremendous tool for doing that, with inumerable streams of accessible information, and many avenues for distributing ones views.

I hope this Blog provides you with some useful insights into the precious metals and I invite you to comment or post yourself too.

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Caveat: There is nothing in this Blog that can be considered or taken as investment advice. I am not an investment or financial advisor and don’t want to be one. If you act on anything you read or see hear, you did it because you wanted to, not because of anything to do with me.