Many analysts believe they have insights that enable them to predict the future. They forecast gold going anywhere from $2,600 to $5,000 before the end of 2012 or by the end of 2013 at the latest. Unfortunately, the reading public quickly forgot their prognostications and continue to put credence in their latest crystal ball predictions. This site has decided to call their number. Below is a list of those bold enough to forecast the price of gold reaching a particular price by a specific date and missing the mark.

No one has a crystal ball and I certainly don’t claim to have one. [Nevertheless,] I strongly believe that the prices we see today in gold and silver will be looked back upon in the next few years as a great buying opportunity. The data I read and understand tells me the case for gold and silver is now a strong one...If you are conservative dollar cost average into a position for a long time now [otherwise] I am OK with a full allocation into gold and silver at this point in time...

Unsustainable trends can survive much longer than most people anticipate, but they do end when their “time is up” – at the culmination of their time cycles...In an effort to bring clarity in how and when these trends could change direction we analyzed more than 20 different cycles. They almost unanimously point to tectonic shifts in the months and years ahead … starting now. We have been warned. At this point, we have enough confirmation to accept that the gold and silver crash – starting in April of 2013 – was the first shot across the board of what is to come. Read on!

Ronald Stoeferle takes an holistic view on the latest developments in the gold market laying out the fundamental arguments why the gold bull market remains intact and concluding, based on conservative assumptions, that the long-term price target for gold is $2,230.

What do 1929, 2000 and 2007 all have in common? Those were all years in which we saw a dramatic spike in margin debt. In all three instances, investors became highly leveraged in order to "take advantage" of a soaring stock market but, of course, we all know what happened each time. The spike in margin debt was rapidly followed by a horrifying stock market crash. Well guess what? It is happening again.

As investors we crave a specific plan of attack for every conceivable market scenario so here are five alternative courses of action (other than cash) to consider in the current market. (Yes, it’s possible to put the market volatility to work for us.) So writes Louis Basenese (www.wallstreetdaily.com) in edited excerpts from his original article* entitled The Five Smartest Responses to the Stock Market …

Fearing that the flow of nourishing mother milk from the Fed could dry up, a resolutely unweaned Wall Street threw a hissy fit and the dummy out of the pram last Thursday. The end of QE is seen as the beginning of the end of super-easy policy and potentially the first towards normalization. There is only one problem: it won’t happen. Here's why.

Stocks rallied through May this year mostly on expectations of continued easy money from the Federal Reserve but after the Fed indicated last week that tapering could begin as early as this fall, coupled with concerns about Chinese growth, stocks sharply reversed course and Treasury yields spiked. I expect market volatility to last through the summer as investors remain uncertain about the future of monetary policy and the strength of the global recovery. That said, I wouldn’t advocate abandoning stocks. Here's 3 reasons why.

There are many, many different takes on why the stock market has been ripe for a fall and why it has finally happened. Below are 30 of the best-of-the-best such analyses to help you come to some sort of resolution.

How could everything be selling off at once? Aren’t the various different asset classes (stocks, bonds, gold) meant to be hedges against each other? The simple answer is that although it would be great if that were the case, it isn’t — it never was.