Do you think gold and silver would be a wise investment in the current market?

Gold and silver have been going down and have not

yet reached their normal level. Gold under $800 an

ounce and silver $15 an ounce. If you feel like gold

and silver will be going back up (who really knows?)

They should only be a small part of your overall

investment portfolio.

Absolutely not. What you should do is start watching CNBC every chance you get, especially during daytime hours. You will get a better feel for economics and what factors drive the prices of investments.

For the past several years, the Federal Reserve has been doing a program called Quantitative Easing. Basically, what they did is buy the government's own bonds in order to try to bolster the economy - in essence they were creating a lot (really a lot) of money going into the economy. When a lot of money goes into the economy, it usually creates inflation. But since the economy sucked so bad, the main prices it affected were commodities, among them silver and gold.

Now the Fed has started pulling back on QE, a process which will take a year or more. What this means to you is that silver and gold are going nowhere but down. There still is no inflation in the general economy because it still sucks. And without the funny money being injected by the Fed, commodity prices will be stagnant or more likely fall for the next two years.

Another investment to stay away from is bonds.

No, I don't. The price of gold and silver are not at their all time highs, but neither are they at all time lows.

The value of those commodities would not change, merely the price. You would be buying them hoping that you can sell it for a quick profit because of the daily or monthly swings in price. You are trying to guess better than the public (including the professionals) how the price will change.

This is gambling, not investing.

If you buy and hold quality corporate stocks over a period of time, the prices will go up for a real reason - the companies are earning money every year and becoming more valuable. This is NOT gambling.

If you save a portion of your income each payday and as it accumulates invest in stocks, over the course of several years you can grow very wealthy indeed. It is like hiring someone to get a job and earn money for you, and then using that money to hire more workers. Your money grows geometrically.

. .

Nope.

Stocks reliably go up in the long run.

Stocks have yet to see a 20 year period of decline.

Gold has seen 20 year periods of decline, (refer to 1980-2000).

no.