I chose that title ONLY for EMPHASIS. I RECOMMEND NO INVESTMENTS!

And yet... that is the message of Adam Hamilton, who to my mind is the most perceptive and persuasive analyst of gold and other precious metals, their stocks, and the forces--fundamental, emotional, technical (charts)--that drive them.

Between about 2001 and 2011, he guided subscribers to his two publications "ZEAL Intelligence" and the "ZEAL Speculator" to legendary gains in the gold and silver bull markets. He was boasting, rightly, about average gains of 50 percent on hundreds of closed trades.

And that was right through 2008 and its horrors because from the horrific bottoms hit by gold and the gold-mining stocks, investors, following Hamilton, saw a quadrupling of their investments through 2011.

Then, things changed. A valid correction began from a gold price around $1900 an ounce. Ah, but then the Federal Reserve began an intervention in financial markets that was historically unimaginable: its outright inflation, including three phases of "quantitative easing," beggared belief. ZERO interest rates for six years. UNLIMITED printing of new money. Virtual guarantees of more inflation anytime the stock market faltered.

Investment was SUCKED out of gold, commodities, and everything but the stock market: profits guaranteed by the Fed! And so the market levitated some 300 percent. Commodities and any possible alternative investment tanked. GOLD, the ultimate alternative investment, EXPIRED. For five years, now, but with huge acceleration since 2013, gold prices have fallen; prices of gold and silver mining stocks have done WORSE.

I will let Adam Hamilton explain it all in this Friday's free ZEAL essay (Hamilton has written this brilliant free essay every Friday for years: it is the best value on the Web.)

But just in the past few weeks, the long decline in the price of gold, and the gold- and silver-mining stocks, hit a PANIC CAPITULATION. This is exceedingly rare; and, though "conspiracy" theories abound in this area, the international synchronized HIT on gold clearly was orchestrated by very, very major players. It tore down through stop loss levels of long, long duration. While gold plunged in price, the already despised and hated gold- and silver-mining stocks were murdered.

Now: here is your bottom line. As a result of this gigantic sell off, the gold-mining stocks, whose profits depend upon the gold price, are selling at the average level they did when their only product, gold, sold for $300 an ounce. Today, after the vicious hit, gold sells for $1100 an ounce. Is it sensible that the gold miners should be priced at the same level they were when their product was less than one-third its present price?

Yes, there are a few miners of recent formation whose costs of production are very high--as much as $1000 an ounce. And at present prices, they are in trouble. Yes, sure, any sector has its outliers.

But the premier miners of gold, at this gold price, or even one considerably lower, can make big profits. So they are being sold at absurd prices, given their earnings.

So...after five long years during which those of us holding gold stocks have felt gutted like trout for the pan, and the market has come to loathe gold stocks, WHAT DO WE DO?

Between 2001 and 2011, stocks that make up the HUI gold-stock index gained 1600 percent. During those 10 years, the flagship S&P500 gained 14 percent.

Investors hold gold as the ultimate currency and safe haven, when governments inflate the money supply (like three rounds of open-ended "quantitative easing"), increase their debt levels (today the U.S. federal debt is $18 trillion), and threaten to throw their economies into chaos (e.g., Greece). And when stock markets are SUPER overbought (after three years of Fed driven levitation of the market).

So what do you think? Is gold forever the has-been investment? Only the stock market henceforth? And the U.S. dollar soaring? And the economy thriving? And any hedges against inflation or financial manipulation or economic chaos a thing of the past? Back when government somehow was unable to guarantee permanent prosperity as achieved by the Obama administration?

Or...is Adam Hamilton right, still pushing his analysis, still making the contrarian case that now, when gold-mining stocks are left for dead, the brave investor cal lay up a future fortune?

Here is his essay for this Friday, at the dark heart of the gold capitulation:

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