No desire to become an apologist for gold - or any other investment. I've already stated that equities and corporate bonds are better alternatives over very long time frames. I do believe, however, that all investments have their "season". And to argue that gold is never useful to some in hedging portfolio risk is akin to arguing that short-selling of equities or holding cash (even at near 0 rates) can never be useful. The latter two are recognized ways for some to hedge the aggressive sides of a balanced portfolio. To that extent, gold may play a role.
More clarity as to the nature of "Bills" on Siegel's chart would be appreciated. It's likely a reference to T-Bills. My understanding is that these come in varying maturities. The 91-day T-Bill rate is often quoted, but 1-year T-Bills are available. I wouldn't (purposely) post data with as ambiguous a nomenclature as Siegel's reference to "Bills".
Regarding investing in T-Bills, it's hard for me to understand how they would have approached gold's return through appreciation during the post-2000 time-frame. Let's take a look. In 2000 gold was selling for $280 per Troy Ounce. This morning it's quoted at $1230. That works out to a compounded annual return of better than 10% over that 15-year span. I don't know what the 1-year T-Bill has returned over 15 years, but it's probably considerably less.
Gold Price Chart: http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf

FYI: I think the biggest change in personal investing over the next 10 years will be that passive portfolio management (rebalancing a portfolio of index funds or ETFs and tax-loss harvesting when holdings are in taxable accounts) will no longer be a service for which people expect to pay money. That is, portfolio management will, in most cases, be free.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2015/02/11/in-the-future-portfolio-management-will-be-free/tab/print/

This has happened to me for years, and I have to be sure to back-arrow to a previous browser session for the cookie to be grabbed properly. Only such site this happens with, so not governed by whatever privacy prefs in the same way.

My fav etf in this space is PJP, up 28% in 2014. Added it 2 years ago because even though I had a health care fund and biotech fund, they did not seem to own large pharma. It's a keeper.

Why Ted, Why?

Why not? Or why get so upset? LOL, it's someone who's been on the floor for 150 years, I think he may know a couple of things he picked up during the eons he's spent at the NYSE. The only issue is that CNBC doesn't actually let him talk beyond "sound bites". Not his fault.
Welcome to the modern day of sound bites and "tweets". Einstein could live today and if he tried to explain tremendous theories to the masses via social media, his PR person would go, "no no, Albert, you have to keep your genius under 140 characters." He'd ask why and then be informed that the modern day population has an attention span of under 140 seconds.
When Cashin has occasionally interviewed elsewhere (King World News a couple of times, at least), he's been highly informative. CNBC is, well, CNBC.

@Junkster - I hope we're both around in 20 years to compare the results. Pick your equities. You must be specific. For example, you can't say the S&P 500 because that changes over time. Unless the paper bill deteriorates both it and the gold bar will be the same as the day they went in the can. We will not be doing any adjustments inflationary or otherwise. $100 today in each of these items will be worth what in 20 years? Could be fun.
Lastly, do remember, I said that I view gold strictly as a collectible however right or wrong that view may be.

And maybe an incentive to live another 20 years. I am the least qualified person to select individual equities for the long run. So why not use VTSMX which pretty much covers the full spectrum of the stock market. Not only has that beaten gold the past 20 years but so has the mundane Merrill Lynch High Yield Master II Index (junk bonds) beaten gold. With stocks near all time highs and gold way off, you may begin with a bit of an advantage. So let's see.
I hate gold with a passion (silver even more) I will always remember gold above 800 in late 79 early 80 and silver at $50 an ounce in April 1980 and think they are both terrible investments, collectibles or whatever. So let's throw in that other dog silver in the 20 year contest with gold and VTSMX. Maybe I will have to eat my words in 20 years assuming I can even still eat by that age and don't have to be spoon fed. I will use tonight's closing prices as my basis

@Junkster - I hope we're both around in 20 years to compare the results. Pick your equities. You must be specific. For example, you can't say the S&P 500 because that changes over time. Unless the paper bill deteriorates both it and the gold bar will be the same as the day they went in the can. We will not be doing any adjustments inflationary or otherwise. $100 today in each of these items will be worth what in 20 years? Could be fun.
Lastly, do remember, I said that I view gold strictly as a collectible however right or wrong that view may be.

You must be looking at Jeremy Siegel's Stocks For The Long Run. There he shows inflation adjusted Total Real Return Indexes 1802-1997. $1 invested in gold worth
84 cents!!!! $1 invested in stocks worth $558,965!!!!!

I do have that book, so it probably has influenced me. What i was thinking of specifically though is what seems to be called "The Parable of Joseph's Penny" wherein a single penny at compound interest of 1% becomes something like $4.5 Million, and at 2 pecent compounded becomes worth more than all the assets in the world. If an ounce gold was worth anything at all 2,000 years ago (and it certainly was), then the 12 or 13 hundred dollars you can get for it must represent a truly minuscule annualized rate of return.
On a similar note, one can take an ordinary piece of paper, tear it in half and put the pieces one on top of the other, tear it in half again......repeating this process only 50 times, and one will have a stack of paper that will rise way beyond the moon. Try it sometime! It is great fun
dryflower

Owned a few 1-oz K-Rands in the mid 80s. Beautiful coins. Had a slight reddish hue. I understand they add a bit of copper to harden them (unlike many other gold coins), as gold's a soft metal. Aesthetic value is very difficult to calculate and is in the eyes of the beholder. However, when you add-in the aesthetic value enjoyed in addition to the likely capital appreciation over time, I think it's a reasonable investment. I don't like the safety/security issues associated with such physical investments (assaying, storing, insuring, transporting, selling, etc.) Hell, I won't even wear a watch worth more than $25 in some locations I frequent. And than there's the ever present threat of government prohibition, restriction or regulation. For those reasons, we don't invest in physical pms or collectibles.
As far as owning the metal on paper, pms are just about the "rockiest" markets you can find. Prices are erratic and unpredictable. My experience is that it's a lot easier to lose money than to make money with them. I do own a small slice of PRPFX for diversity. The fund holds some gold and pms. That fund is one odd mix of assets, and I gravitate towards the "odd-man-out" type of investment for the sake of diversity (much to the chagrin of some formidable voices here).
There's a natural human tendancy to view the world through our own time-lense and to assume things will always remain the same. Based on most of our experience since around the mid 80s, equities appear the best alternative. Had you been investing in the 70s and early 80s you would likely have been looking more to hard assets as a safe haven or, believe it or not, at plain old cash. It was easy in the late 70's to pull in 15-20% annually simply by investing in money market funds. Who'd run the risk of buying equities with those types of returns on cash? Better be careful not to overlook bonds. Since long-term interest rates have been declining now for about 35 years, bonds have been great investments over that period. (Note to beginners: Interest rates do not always decline.)
I'd agree with another distinguished poster here that gold & commodities are not "winning" long term investments when held up against either equities or corporate bonds. The last two are growth-oriented and increase in value as the world's economies grow and prosper. Gold, on the other hand, tends to track both inflation and investor sentiment. (One component of that sentiment relates to perceived value of various paper currencies.) Since sentiment is difficult to define and quantitify, this probably accounts much for gold's erratic performance.

How should I know. Maybe it would appreciate (or not) like this treasure did:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/one-rare-super-snake-appears-40-years-dust/
The point isn't about what material things are worth at some future point in time. The point is are they considered to be investments. Each owner might have their own opinion on the matter.

I think the answer depends on one's definition of investment. For me, gold is a collectible just like any other perceived treasure. Let's say I put a $100 bar of gold and a $100 US paper bill in a can and bury it out in the back yard for 20 years. When I dig up the can to redeem the contents the $100 bill might buy me half of what it did 20 years earlier due to inflation while the $100 bar of gold will most likely buy me the same suit and loaf of bread it would have when I buried it. Does that make it an investment? Decide for yourself. I just like looking at the panda's and koala's.

Agree, but what about $100 in equities? Will check back with you in 20 years on that one.

I think the answer depends on one's definition of investment. For me, gold is a collectible just like any other perceived treasure. Let's say I put a $100 bar of gold and a $100 US paper bill in a can and bury it out in the back yard for 20 years. When I dig up the can to redeem the contents the $100 bill might buy me half of what it did 20 years earlier due to inflation while the $100 bar of gold will most likely buy me the same suit and loaf of bread it would have when I buried it. Does that make it an investment? Decide for yourself. I just like looking at the panda's and koala's.

My Large Cap funds are averaging 10% year for last 10 years, that's all I ask, and collecting those additional shares from Divs.....Growth at best/low risk investing...fine

FYI: Large-cap stock mutual funds have trailed small- and midcap funds for much of the past 15 years.
How much would you have in your account now if you had invested $10,000 in the average large-cap fund on Dec. 31, 1999? You'd have $16,641 as of Jan. 9 this year, according to Morningstar Inc. data.
That's way below the $37,371 that the average small-cap mutual fund would have generated in that time and the $34,806 that the average midcap fund would have returned.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTg5NjA5NzE=
Enlarged Graphic;
http://news.ptest.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=webLV021115.jpg&docId=738841&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=1063&caption=&id=738848

Good point about Don Hodges dying. Craig and two other Texans joined the HDPSX team in 2007. It's hard to know how much Hodges père was contributing in his later years or how much his absence will affect the funds.

If you're willing to go back thousands of years, the rate of return must be minuscule -- way, way under 1% annualized.

You must be looking at Jeremy Siegel's Stocks For The Long Run. There he shows inflation adjusted Total Real Return Indexes 1802-1997. $1 invested in gold worth
84 cents!!!! $1 invested in stocks worth $558,965!!!!!
When gold was allowed to trade freely in the 70s it immediately ran up to 100 to 200.
I recall trading it in the futures markets in the 200s. Then it ran up to over $800. So that is why I am so biased against gold. From its peak in late 79/early 80 above $800 what has it done??? Silver is even worse when it hit 50 in April 1980 when the Hunts cornered the market. Since seemingly my entire lifetime all I have heard from the gold and silver bugs is how there is a shortage and you better hoard all you can.

@BenWP Thanks. I hold BRUSX too. Bridgeway had a couple of miserable years, but they've come back recently. In general I like the way Bridgeway runs things and intend to stick around.

If you're willing to go back thousands of years, the rate of return must be minuscule -- way, way under 1% annualized.

The waiver is still in place, until at least February 28, 2016. Expenses, excluding "interest, taxes, dividend expense, borrowing costs, acquired fund fees and expenses, interest expense related to short sales, and extraordinary expenses" are limited to 1.35% and 1.60% for the institutional and investor class shares, respectively.
Take a look at the expense breakdown. "Dividend and interest expense on short sales" is 1.00%; "acquired fund fees" is 0.07%. Subtract their sum, 1.07%, from the ERs you quoted and you get ERs of 1.25% and 1.50% respectively - below the cap imposed by the fee waiver. So while the waiver is in place, the amount of fees waived is 0.
Actually, it's a bit worse than that. Like many fee waivers, this one has a claw back provision. If the actual ER comes out to be less than the waiver cap, then the fund will raise the ER up to the cap level, in order to recapture the fees that it waived over the past three years.
So here, because the actual ERs are 10 basis points below the promised caps (e.g. 1.25% is 0.10% below the cap of 1.35%), the fund will tack on an extra 10 basis points to get back the fees it waived in the past. It can only do this for three years, and only until it reclaims all the fees it waived. Still ...

I have held HDPSX for a while, but I am concerned about its asset bloat (approaching 2 bil). Other than what's on M* and the Hodges website, I don't know much about the new fund. It did very well last year. I agree with you about new funds from successful managers. I own some AKREX and quite a lot of Walthausen's two funds. I got burned in Bridgeway's microcap fund a few years ago; it got rolled into BRUSX, I think. However, I am a believer in small value in small packages, so I'm likely to move some dough over to HDSVX.