Gold book sales point to upcoming retail gold boom

You might not be able to judge a book by its cover but you might be able to judge a bull market in gold by that way.

The photo above was snapped in the shop window of a leading bookstore in Hong Kong last week, while ‘The Goldwatcher’ by John Katz and Frank Holmes sold out quickly at the Agora Financial symposium in Vancouver recently.

It is a sure sign that a market has either topped or is about to enter a spike phase when books on this investment class are selling well. Remember the famous Dow at 20,000 or 30,000 books of the Millennium?

But I think we have to wait for the gold at $15,000 book before getting really worried. The present gold book offerings are fairly sober guides to the history of the precious metal and the various theories about its future price, and tend to be pretty equivocal.

However, investment books are always out-of-date because publishers have ridiculously long lead times. Thus information will always be six months at least behind the times, and so when you read a prediction about a market top on a book cover it will probably already have happened.

Hence you should look out for sensational predictions on book covers, as they are probably an indication that you should be heading for cover.