Recently, author and former trader Nassim Taleb published his latest book Skin in the Game. He is widely praised for his previous bestsellers, The Black Swan and Antifragility. Nassim Taleb has a decades-long track record as a pit trader (as early as in the 1980s). Two months ago, I had the pleasure to spend an entire week with this controversial and no-nonsense thinker. What are some of the lessons that we can draw from Taleb’s work as gold investors and what did he have to say about gold?

This week I stumbled upon an interesting chart. In this chart, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI), an index tracking the prices of a basket of commodities, is contrasted with the S&P 500 index. This gives us the GSCI/S&P 500 ratio. Whenever the GSCI/S&P 500 ratio is high, we are paying relatively little for stocks in terms of commodities. Conversely, if the ratio is low, we are paying relatively much for stocks relative to commodities. What does the ratio imply right now? Is this the

In 2007, the world economy began to show signs of an impending downturn. At the beginning of March 2008, the Federal Reserve was forced to rescue the corporate bank Bear Stearns. Suddenly, the crisis became an undeniable fact, even among the most optimistic among us. That very same week, gold prices rose to over $1,000 dollar per troy ounce. The recession of 2008 began to gain in strength. The banking system came close to a complete collapse. On Monday September 15, 2008, the crisis reached a climax, when the U.S. bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. One month later, the Dutch government, among many other governments, was forced to bailout the nation´s commercial banks: in October 2008, Fortis/ABN AMRO was nationalized. ING, Aegon and SNS Bank also received an injection of capital