The Week Ahead for Oil and Gold

This short video discusses how oil and gold will be on the rise again this week for the ninth straight week, presumably coming to the strike price of around $1500 and oil will also see significant gains in all markets. The video also discusses how grain futures are slowly becoming more and more popular among traders as a more food producers are looking to make healthier products using whole grains.

The "Easy Way Out"

"The world's wealthiest people have responded to economic worries by buying gold by the bar — and sometimes by the ton — and by moving assets out of the financial system, bankers catering to the very rich said on Monday.

Fears of a double-dip downturn have boosted the appetite for physical bullion as well as for mining company shares and exchange-traded funds, UBS executive Josef Stadler told the Reuters Global Private Banking Summit.

"They don't only buy ETFs or futures; they buy physical gold," said Stadler, who runs the Swiss bank's services for clients with assets of at least $50 million to invest.

UBS is recommending top-tier clients hold 7-10 percent of their assets in precious metals like gold, which is on course for its tenth consecutive yearly gain and traded at around $1,314.50 an ounce on Monday, near the record level reached last week."

I look at this from the alternative viewpoint of the run-of-the-mill everyday investor, who may not have $50 million in cash to put into gold or precious metals, but rather must turn to other high-yield stock choices that has nowhere near the security that putting money into physical metals. Although signs point to a double-dip recession, it seems only those who are super-wealthy are those who are safe.

Gold Rush Back Again in the Western US?

A prime example of the effects of our economy, a small construction business owner named John Brewer who lost his job as a result of our sour economy, found income through one of the oldest pastimes of the "Old West." Prospecting for gold. Through everything with our economy, gold (XAU=X 1268.65 -0.13%) has steadily rose in price and has kept a very high value and shows no signs of falling. At 1268.65, an ounce of gold is quite a "pretty penny" in the eyes of those struggling to keep their small businesses up on their feet, or their own lives stable. Though incredibly old-fashioned, prospecting has become a simple way to make a quick buck as it is rarely government-regulated outside designated mines and areas. This gives people a unique opportunity to gamble time away from their businesses and work that they may have lost to do what built up wealth in the West, searching for gold. When asked the prospectors find their gold, the only response that anyone could get from someone who knows what their doing is, "That's like asking an angler where his secret fishing spot is."