Silver answers for a silly girl

My Silly Girl breaks her kiss long enough to ask:

should we be buying silver? i checked ajpm and prices are way up. are they gonna' keep going up? omg is gold worth more now or is money worth less!?!?!?!

David Craft gets the last question correct with a terse, "Yes, it is." Playing straight is the essence of comedy, right Dave?

But on the first question, it's not whether people should be buying silver (I've been saying they should for 10 years) but whether they should be buying it *today*. I haven't bought any physical silver since it was under $5 an ounce. It's almost tripled since then and it is not the compelling investment it once was.

That's the problem with many investments: no one wants them when they're unpopular, but let them triple and people can't get enough of them. But that's just my pet peeve; I'm a bottom feeder and speculator and simply do not understand the herd mentality.

My advice is to get some, but to wait until a pullback to do so. No market goes straight up; no market goes straight down. The time to buy is still when no one else seems to want it. So wait for the market to get its butt kicked, when silver drops a dollar in a day, or falls below $12 or so an ounce, or when your favourite ignoramus econ reporter declares the bull market over...in other words, wait until you are scared to buy. That's when everyone else is, too, and when you'll get the best deal.

The idea is to maximize return, for sure. But it's also to minimize risk by buying at a point where it is more likely to immediately go up than to go down. As much noise as I make about the death of the dollar, it's not coming by this Sunday. It IS coming before you retire. So sometime between Sunday and that day will be the day to spend your dying dollars on silver and gold and oil and anything else that's real.

Pick it wisely.

UPDATE: Ignore the morons except to do the opposite of what they say:

SD's Union Trib tells us the bull run might be over today:

If Bernanke signals the Fed's intent to continue raising rates, it could cool the gold market by making the dollar more attractive to foreign investors. But if Bernanke suggests a pause in rate increases, gold could continue its climb.

Even ignoring the weasel world 'could,' this makes no sense whatsoever. The Fed has raised rates at 15 straight meetings going back 2 years. During that same time, gold has more than doubled. It's gone up $200 since November and $100 in the last month. But a 16th rate or 17th or 18th increase, that's going to cool the gold market? Shallow, shallow, shallow.

The sign to watch is not interest rates; it's the medium-term strength of the dollar compared to other currencies and commodities. So long as it continues down, it doesn't matter what the Fed does. Well, with the notable exception that it's the Fed's debt/credit issuance that's destroying the dollar in the first place.