The entire global market is extremely dangerous because of the tsunami of hot cash which has been flooding in from the Fed. As Marc Faber says, there is a bubble in everything, the first time this has happened in the history of the world.
I’m hesitant to give advice precisely because of the dicey market. However, I can point you in some directions that have helped me. First of all, read everything you can find by Jim Rogers and Marc Faber. Look up the names of some of the big hedge fund managers because they tend to have a more mercenary approach to investing and speak plainly about the true nature of inflation and the political monetary regime in general.
Also, realign your mindset… start thinking like you’re a duke or the patriarch of some old aristocratic family… it’s your job to protect your family’s property from the rabbles and their pilfering democratic governments. That means you have to do surveillance on the enemy… what I do is I regularly search Google News with a list of keywords (I’ll gladly provide them if you’re interested) related to gold, oil, agriculture and other commodities, countries where there is instability, the major capitols of the world, the names of the heads of central banks, and so on. Because our monetary system is political, you constantly have to keep an eye on the political situation. For the most part, the old financial rags are useless… Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, etc. These guys have blinders on to the political nature of the monetary system and want to pretend that it’s just business as usual no matter currency wars, central bank inflationary tsunamis, etc. They have a childish mindset about money and politics.
I predicted early this summer that silver and oil would be a better place to be than gold and this has come true. At this point, silver is looking overheated to me and I would move money out of silver into oil (even though oil has already been on a long, bull run since '09) and continue to hold your gold. Agricultural commodities is the big one being consistently mentioned by Faber and Rogers but I don’t know a lot about how to invest in ag commodities. I imagine you can just go buy bushels wheat on some index somewhere. The inflationary flood is driving up food prices and people in second- and third-world countries are feeling the pinch the most… this is the spark that triggered the riots in Egypt and elsewhere. There are reports of some protesting in India due to rising food prices. The inevitable effect of all this hot cash will be to drive up food prices, particuarly in poor countries, since inflation is a regressive tax that gets shed off to the weakest in the economy. So, buy ag commodities for sure and you can also look into buying ag stocks (be careful inside the US since our ag system is strangled by massive regs).
As always, do your own homework and maintain humility. You don’t know any more than the next guy and you’re not an insider. The best you and I can do is (a) enumerate the insane courses of action from which the political leaders can choose and (b) guess what insane course of action the political leaders will choose next. This is what I like about Faber’s approach… he doesn’t say “they’re printing money, prices will rise!” he gets inside the mind of a government, as if he were one, and asks himself what are the possible choices that can be made? Nothing’s off the table, not even starting a war to distract the public. When you start thinking like that, you’re on the right track.
P.S. if you have any money in IRAs, 401(k), etc. get it out! Pay the penalty and get that money out, they’re coming for it. Set aside a certain amount of money to be “untraceable”, i.e. no paper trail. Regularly go to your local coin shop and buy silver with cash and store it in a (real) safe. Buy silver, not gold, for two reasons. First, gold purchases are now tracked under the healthcare law requiring all transactions over $600 to be reported to the IRS. Second, silver is most likely to have street value in a SHTF scenario. You should not have a large percentage of your nest egg in this form but enough to keep yourself fed and clothed while making arrangements to leave the country if things get that bad (sad to say, they really just might get that bad).
Clayton -