So has the train left the station or is there time to get on?  We ponder this question for gold as an investment.  The barbarous relic pays no dividend, generates no earnings, and, thus, has no intrinsic value as Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett would define it.  It has, however, value in its scarcity.  I’d guess it’s one asset that a majority of investors and speculators agree has some–if not significant–upside.

That agreement, along advertisements like the one below, causes us to question whether gold is too popular right now.  (Of course, there were those who said that the introduction of the first gold-bullion exchange-traded fund, the GLD, which is now the second largest ETF behind the big S & P 500 SPDR, SPY.)

I came across a blog posting (here and shown below) that compared the percentage of financial assets that gold represented in 1982 compared to now.  At 17% then and 4% now, it sure looks like gold has some upside. 

We get lots of good stuff from lots of good folks.  Most of them are zealously protective of their work, namely the anagramical DEN VADIS.  A few, however, are good enough to allow republication, like Cumberland Advisors.  You can sign up for their free periodic updates, which have recently included the excellent series on the BP spill, “Oil Slickonomics,” by clicking here.  They are the source of the update below, which dovers everything from politics to portfolios.

I’ve mentioned the excellent sentimenTrader service in the past.  At just $250 per year it’s a steal for high-level sentiment analysis.  Click here for a free trial.  Anyway, the sort of marquee offering of the service–I pressed Jason Goepfert, the man behind it, and he said it’s the one thing he’d take if he had to choose just one–is the Smart Money/Dumb Money Confidence indicator. (more…)