On any given day, you can find numerous articles about the hazards posed by our federal debt, municipal debt, consumer debt, and so on. The list is long and plenty scary. But there is surprisingly little talk about one of the most dangerous situations of all: the trouble in America’s recently booming oil patch.

Virtually anyone looking at the markets today can sense that something is a bit amiss, that there is a disconnect with reality. The hard part of making use of such a sense is quantifying just how out of whack things are, and when the inevitable reality reconnect will occur. Especially when dealing with cycles that can last much longer than the typical stock market whipsaw each decade. Perspective is important, as is watching the long term indicators — more and more of which are showing overheated markets.

We started our ‘Nowhere to Run’ series with looks at the wildly overvalued stock market, and a bubbly housing market. Today we tackle the world’s biggest market:  bonds, and their unsustainable valuation.

Warren Buffett is the undisputed king of value investors. And his very own indicator is flashing “sell” today. If you need more evidence that recent market action may be more than short-term gyrations, read this…

We’ve forgotten the lessons of just ten years ago, when speculative buying fed a massive bubble. It's an unsustainable trend. It must end, and will end badly for those left holding the bag. When the new housing market bubble pops, the prudent investor is going to want to be holding the only investment sector not currently in the midst of extraordinary overvaluation: hard assets.

Guest Contributor and GoldSilver Senior Precious Metals Analyst Jeff Clark has discovered an incredible statistic: using the original CPI inflation equation (circa 1980, before it was changed, and changed, and changed again to suit politicians' agendas), both gold and silver are at 50-year inflation-adjusted price lows.

Growing up in Europe, I have always been fascinated by its history and how it manifests everywhere you look. Every building, be it an ordinary house or a glorious monument, wears the marks of historic events, which remind us about past successes and failures.

I feel the world would be a much better place if we all were better students of history and learned from the mistakes our elders made. Unfortunately, as generations change, we tend to forget the horrors of the past, allowing the forces that be to repeat the same mistakes.

In my youth, I was lucky enough to hear countless stories from elders about life during World War I and World War II. As much as I like to read about history, nothing compares to accounts from people who experienced it firsthand. This is one of the reasons I started this series of articles featuring our customers’ stories and what they learned from their experiences.

Today, Peter W. from South Africa is sharing his early childhood lessons about money with us.

People love bargains. They will travel miles to find an item they want on sale.

But this behavior is rarely present in investing. Driven by fear of missing out, all too often investors follow the herd and buy assets in a bubble. 

Do you remember the investment craze when the Nasdaq was trading at 5,000 in early 2000? Or Bitcoin above $19,000 last December? The mania quickly turned into devastating losses.

Conversely, when Goldman Sachs was trading at $52 in November of 2008 or GE under $7 in March of 2009, few investors had the guts to buy amid collapsing markets. 

Only true value investors like Warren Buffett were buying.

My point is that forward-looking investors should always look for value in unloved assets that are trading near lows. That’s especially important in a world of low yields.

Today, gold trades under $1,300/oz. It’s been out of favor for more than seven years after it reached all-time highs in 2011 and some pundits were predicting $10,000 an ounce or more.

Look, gold is now trading at a 35% discount from its previous high.  It is truly a bargain in a world laden with record levels of debt and artificially inflated financial assets. 

In the long run, therefore, gold has nowhere to go but up!  However, there is an even more attractive investment you can get into today.

It’s silver.

When the stock market crashed in 2008, the average worker lost about 25% of their savings. That’s the average. There were less prudent folks who lost 50% and more due to lack of diversification.

Now imagine that happened to you just before you entered your hard-earned retirement. 50% of your savings are gone and you have no time to recoup it. That’s the nightmare many soon-to-be retirees experienced when the markets crashed.

My point is, if your retirement savings are tied only to unstable financial markets, your nest egg is at risk. And no matter whether you are in your 20s or 60s, losing a big chunk of your savings is no fun.

As such, you have to hedge. And one of the best ways to do that is to own physical gold in your IRA account.

But before I explain what a gold IRA is, let me briefly tell you why gold is a must in your retirement fund in the first place.

The other day, Hard Assets Alliance customer Ron Saunders reached out to me. It turned out, Ron was not only a gold investor but also a novel writer.

He was gracious enough to send me a copy of The Aurykon Chronicles, a tale about teenage boy Mack Thomas learning his crucial life lessons through conversations with his life mentor and grandfather, Pappy.

In one chapter, Pappy bought his grandson a Gold Eagle as a birthday present and explained to him why society has valued the metal for thousands of years— and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Their dialogue is a fascinating read that I recommend to each of you.

Essentially, the conversation between Mach and Pappy boils down the fundamentals of investing in gold, explained in 5-year-old terms.

Sometimes cases for gold may be dull and boring. But Ron, using his uncanny storytelling, explains (or reminds) you of the reasons to invest in gold through a compelling narrative—telling but also entertaining.

I hope you enjoy reading this excerpt as much as I did.

Every economy eventually skids into a recession as part of the natural cycle of ups and downs. And each recession has one common feature: big losses in equities.

In the dot-com crash, for example, most Internet stocks went down 70–90% from their all-time highs, which was a death sentence for investors who heavily speculated on tech stocks.

But even if you are diversified among different sectors, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are safe.

In 2008, the whole S&P 500 index suffered a fall of 38.5%. Now, if you could afford to wait until the market recovered, you were fine. But for those who needed money to cover immediate living expenses, or worse, retirement plans, it was devastating.

As such, hedging your portfolio against a downturn in equities is key to long-term success in investing and your prosperity.

So, how exactly do you shield your portfolio from a recession? The answer lies in the correlation of your assets…