Every year, around the beginning of May, we take a trip over to a local coffee shop to see what the average Joe thinks about the markets. The most efficient way to do this is to administer a poll to this crowd of mostly working class professionals in their 20s, 30s and 40s. While not the most scientific of polls, the data below is quite informative.
Where is the safest place to put your money?
These results do not surprise us one bit. The phrase "money in the bank" still has meaning when it comes to cash being the safest place to store wealth. It is interesting to see that some people are catching on to inflation protection as the precious metals response has become more popular. We laugh at the percentage of respondents who said real estate was the safest - apparently, housing prices only go up.
Which one of these will perform the worst in the next five years?
While the hostility towards metals has modestly declined, gold and silver seem to be hated as an investment. This poll result, along with the supply/demand fundamentals, certainly refutes all the recent talk about a bubble in gold and silver.
Do you know what a Krugerrand is?
The results speak for themselves. We only wonder what the percentage of people responding "yes" would have been in 1980.
Can you name three tech stocks?
Can you name three mining stocks?
Again, hardly the sign of a gold bubble. We are not saying that HUI and XAU will ever become more popular than the NASDAQ, but you get the idea. Main Street investors are still in love with tech stocks which are down more than 50% from their highs while gold has doubled off its bottom and no one cares. Subscribers to our newsletter know that any outlook for gold and silver should be long term in nature and that painful corrections are part of the game.
