I Miss My Bricks

I'm going to indulge in a few minor sins right now: (a) a touch of self-pity; (b) a touch of blaming someone else for an investment decision; (c) more than a touch of regret.

About a year ago, I was flush with cash, so I decided to do something I'd never done before - - buy some precious metals bullion. I bought a 1000 ounce brick of silver (and when I say brick, I mean brick - - this thing weighed nearly 70 kilos, and I could hardly lift it) and a 1000 gram bar of gold.

I mainly bought them because, frankly, it was just kinda cool. A minuscule reason was all the talk about the need for precious metals just to get by in daily life. But it was mostly just for fun.

However, there was a lot of persistent talk in the EWI STU - - I think this was early this year - - - about how gold was going to tumble from $950 to under $690, and silver would fall even harder. So the fact that these things were kind of unwieldy, were at risk of being stolen, and were - - according to Elliott Wave theory - - at risk of tumbling in value - - made me drive them back to where I bought them, where I sold them for a small profit. I think I made perhaps a thousand bucks. Hardly even worth the trouble of driving around.

As I sit here, watching gold and silver explode yet again to new highs, I can't help but think of the tens of thousands of dollars in profits that I denied myself. And - - I really gotta say - - it just pounds a few more golden- and silver-plated nails into the coffin holding the body of my faith in Elliott Wave as a basis for forward-looking decisions. It's all very cute and precious and lovely in retrospect, but for predictive value...........I'm really having grave doubts.