In the 1840s, Thoreau lived in a cabin in the woods for two years. He wrote Walden, a famous book about his experience.

In 2018, Kate and I went to live in our own financial “cabin in the woods.”

We sold all our liquid assets, drained our bank accounts, and handed in the keys to our apartments. I sold my car, all my furniture, and converted everything to physical gold and silver.

It wasn’t an investment or a specific speculation to make money. We simply decided we didn’t want to live in the financial system anymore. So we took a financial sabbatical… and decided to go live in the “woods” for a while.

In my eyes, the whole system resembled a giant and completely inappropriate experiment. I was seeing cracks everywhere – sudden air pockets in the stock market… irrational pricing… fragility.

I saw a total rejection of saving in favor of debt. I saw efforts to prop up the markets using unsound money and financial engineering. Things like quantitative easing. And artificially lowered interest rates. And huge government deficits.

The economy seemed almost like it was begging to liquidate itself. And yet the feds kept pushing and talking it up.

The most disconcerting part of it all was that no one seemed to care. It felt like we were riding on the Titanic, speeding through an ice field…

Today, as I write to you, Kate and I remain in our financial “cabin in the woods.” And as I study economics and watch the financial news, nothing has changed.

The feds are still “managing” the economy… with more financial engineering, more unsound money, bigger deficits, and more soothing words.

The system still looks to me like the Titanic speeding through an ice field… except it’s traveling even faster now.

So we’re sticking with gold and silver. We’ll stay there, on the sidelines, until it’s safe to return to the financial system. How will we know when it’s safe?

The Dow-to-Gold ratio is our ultimate barometer. When it falls below 5 again, we’ll know it’s time to trade in our gold and silver and return to stocks.

The ratio is at 14 today.

Regards,

Tom Dyson
Editor, Postcards From the Fringe

P.S. I’ve invested nearly $1 million of my own money into this idea.

I’ve written before about the benefits of buying bullion. But there’s much more to my strategy than that.

And on Wednesday, May 20, at 8 p.m. ET, I’m sharing the details in an urgent briefing. Save your spot right here.