There are many different investments that you as an investor can pursue. But when it comes to investing

in your retirement portfolio, there are three specific investments you should stay away from.

The first investment that you should not own in your retirement portfolio is gold. Now, to

understand why, let's understand some context here and take a step back. When it comes to your

retirement accounts, the goal there is to fund your ability to maintain your lifestyle and retirement. To do that, you need two things. You need growth and investments to maintain your purchasing power and offset inflation over time. And number two, you need protection. You need protection against the inevitable downturns, the inevitable extended downturns, that will happen in the stock market. So where does gold fit into the picture

here? Because typically people think of it as an inflation hedge. Well, here's the thing with gold,

and here's why I don't like it. If you go way back to 1934, Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act,

and the Gold Reserve Act pegged the price of gold to $35 per ounce. Now, that pegged price,

that artificially pegged price, meaning the government

controlled it, it wasn't floating on a free market, that lasted until 1971 until President Nixon

removed us from the gold standard. So what do you think happens when you have an asset that's value

is artificially pegged to a certain price, and it's artificially pegged for almost 40 years?

Well, there's a good chance

there's going to be a run-up in the valuation or the price of that asset when the artificial

price, when the artificial peg is removed. That's exactly what we saw in the 1970s. In 1971,

towards the end of 1971, the gold standard was removed, or there's no longer pegged to the dollar.

And from 1972 until the end of the

1970s, the annualized return of gold was 36% per year. So 36% per year from 1972 to 1979. If you

compare that to U.S. stock market, the U.S. stock market annualized 4.6% per year from 1972 until

1980. So when you look at just that, gold was a far superior

investment. You have to ask yourself the question, how much of that runup was attributed to gold

all of a sudden be worth a whole lot more versus how much of that was simply gold no longer

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