Aug 22 2008 3:34PM

These are the times that try men’s souls. The following two emails are representative of ones I have received recently. I don’t blame them for feeling the way they do:

Dear Howard,

I hope that you are right!! Silver is trading at $14.09 and Gold is at $805.10 and the bottom seems to be nowhere in sight. I have taken your advice and invested 80% of my assets, both retirement and personal, into junk silver, gold coins and the gold and silver mining equities, either in stocks or mutual funds that you have recommended. The ride is very scary right now and to see my holdings declining by 30% is a very unnerving feeling to say the least.

Please reassure me again that I can "bet the farm" on this investment so that I can sleep at night with the comfort of knowing that this IS the right thing to do.

Richard

* * * * *

Dear Howard

I am a lifetime subscriber, but I must admit I am getting very scared here. Maybe I watch too much CNBC, but it seems even the "long term” gold bugs have given gold up. I have gotten killed the past weeks and am way down for the year due to weak stock prices for mining stocks. Maybe you could uplift me some? It all looks pretty bad. The quote I hear most is: "If gold cannot rise when oil and other commodities hit new highs a time back, gold is done.”

I thank you for any help you can give me.

Jeff

It’s hard to hang onto a position when the whole world says you’re wrong and the markets are going along. I’ve done my homework and again looked at the fundamentals. The fundamentals say we are still headed for much more inflation, and gold and silver will benefit.

These temporary downturns are the result of government manipulation and will be short-lived at best. I remember during the ‘70s when Jimmy Carter announcing they were going to sell gold from Ft. Knox and the markets took a heck of a nosedive. The right thing to do then was to buy cheap, as it turned out.

Now let me give you my all-time best advice for investors: “buy low, well high.”

There is no way you can buy low when everyone else is buying, and buying low is exactly what we need to do here. It will take guts to do this, but this is an opportunity to buy cheap.

I hope you haven’t committed all of your assets to gold and silver. You should have reserved something for just for such a contingency. In the meantime, I see no need to change my recommendations. All the fundamentals are still in place and will just continue.

I just read John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics newsletter, all 25 pages of it. John deals with the government statistics as they really are and should be, not with the way the government twists them. All the fundamentals are intact, and he expects gold and silver to boom and inflation to be a very serious matter. In fact, when you look at his take on current inflation it is over 13 percent. That 13 percent means a lot higher gold and silver.

In the short-term, the ones who have been temporarily hurt the most are those who own mining stocks and stock mutual funds. They have underperformed, and I advise you to buy them now. There is no reason why they should be so low relative to the fundamental prices of gold and silver.

I know that I’m offering advice that is hard to take. It is difficult to go against the tide, but that is my view; right or wrong I’m stuck with it.

RADIO INTERVIEW

I have been done several recent radio interviews and have met some old friends who interviewed with me years ago.

Jim Blasingame of The Small Business Advocate has made his interview available at www.rufftimes.com. Click on the Small Business Advocate Interview. Enjoy!

By Howard Ruff
The Ruff Times

*****

Howard J. Ruff, the legendary author and financial advisor, has re-edited and will re-issue his 1978 mega best seller, How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years, still the biggest-selling financial book in history, with 2.6 million copies in print. He is founder and editor of The Ruff Times Financial Newsletter. This article appeared in the May 9, 2008 issue of The Ruff Times. The newsletter is much more comprehensive and deals with a broad spectrum of middle-class financial issues and includes an Investment Menu from which you can build your portfolio.

"Right on Ruff!"

RUF