Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book has some good introductory information, and is probably of some use to anyone considering gold or silver as an investment. With that in mind, these guys are gold bugs, or hucksters putting the hard sell on for gold. Period. Their portfolio "diversification" strategies are basically between holding actual gold and mining stocks. I mean...thats it! NOTHING else. That is just plain loopy, and frankly irresponsible to recommend. We are to conclude that NO other commodity would be worthy of investment? We are to conclude the entire world will only want to hold gold, and no other asset? Yes, in an absolute financial melt-down, gold and silver would offer some big benefits, but folks owning other basic materials would not do so badly either. Maybe better. That bears discussion, but gets very little. They are either lazy in their writing, or are deliberately overlooking certain facts in conveying their advice. For instance, in their chapter on direct investment in gold, they make it sound like holding physical gold basically has no advantages to investing in digital gold. I found that curious, since there are obvously some advantages to holding the actual gold, versus the representational forms. Then, later in the book, they finally fessed up and said that James Turk is one of the main backers of "digital gold". After putting a figleaf on how it is a conflict to recommend this means of owning gold, they devote a whole chapter to how this will be the NEW currency, and the only way to hold "cash." Their advice is poorly considered in at least a few places, so it makes me wonder how much thought they put into anything else. Their discussion of aggressive strategies very briefly discusses buying mining stocks on margin. They show the gross profits from margin trading, but do not even mention the cost of borrowing the funds to do so. Yet, in other chapters they rant about how its VERY dangerous to have variable rate loans, since these rates will go through the roof! So guys, wouldn't it be worth understanding how a soaring rate scenario would affect your margin holdings? Nah! Just throw out a few numbers and move on to the digital gold thing. I have just read "Hot Commodities" by Jim Rogers, and it is a clearly superior book. No obvious hype, a lot more facts and logical thinking. By the way, he makes a pretty good argument why gold is likely not such a good investment compared to other commodities. Now...he too is selling his RICI index of commodities, so he is not fully objective. But at least he makes a reasonable attempt at proving out his thesis. As for some of the above reviews, they smell a lot like shills. They are so over the top in praise of this mediocre book, I would discount them considerably.