There's the core of the fear. What if gold, silver, and platinum have simply lost their lustre and won't mean as much this time around.

It takes loss of faith in the dollar to make the other options seem more worthwhile. Amazingly the dollar hasn't lost everyone's faith yet.

There are too many controls on the market (apart from the United Socialist States of America Government recently imposed ones).

I'm thinking about the procession of fund managers on t.v. that have as a mandate a maximum portfolio allocation in pm stocks of 10% or less. They usually get on t.v. and say that they are maxed out for gold holdings, and have actually had to sell off some. These are the people who dominate the market, and their only alternative if you look at negative bond yields is to go to cash and cash equivalents.

It will take a complete market shakeup (which we are going through) and loss of faith in the dollar (which we may very well have soon) to force them into changing their mandates.

MR