richard russell on gold, page-3

This stuff is OK as long as you don't go overboard. Gold may go off like a wound up spring but for the present it is best to select stocks that will still have a future even if gold just keeps trading around USD300 to 320 for some time.(a very likely scenario.)

I was talking with one of my accountants at a party to mark his retirement from our company last week. We were talking about the stockmarket and gold. He asked me if Jervois was still trading. He said, "I used to work for Sykes (he tried to compete with the big oil companies and in the end got rolled.) you know he started that company and lost a lot of money on it."

He went on, "Sykes was a brilliant man in many ways and he thought he had discoverered the secret of the stock/futures market. However he lost $20 million in a very short time trying to short it."

What I took from that is never to hold an inflexible view of the market. It is changing all the time and even though we may have a fairly rational long term view of gold, for example, it doesn't hurt to "hang loose" and be prepared to update our outlook or position.