Is It Time To Buy Gold?

Given the rise in the equity markets gold has gone down.  Gold is typically a hedge against market downturns.  It would seem to be counter-intuitive to buy gold now that stocks are giving a bigger return.  Plus no one knows how high the market will go.  However, now is probably the best time to start building a gold portfolio.  As the price of gold goes down due to higher equity returns you can buy more of it.  As the adage goes: "buy when people are selling and sell when people are buying."

Market Update 8-13-2013

Retail sales numbers came in today and were up which helped markets to rally upwards.  This and the upward swing on the value of the US Dollar probably contributed to gold going downwards today.  When people see more opportunity in the market they are less likely to run to safe havens like gold. 

Because of the slow economic recovery I still like companies like Dollar Tree (DLTR), Dollar General (DG), Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT).  The ability of people to buy goods is still hampered by the lack of available lending, thus people are still more inclined to look for bargains and spend less.