When you're in the funhouse, you have to continually remind yourself that nothing is real. The hall of mirrors is not the place to run full speed - even if it looks like your path is clear.

What would you buy now? It's a question that we, as self-directed investors should have to answer. Yet the question is asked everyday in almost every financial media outlet. And most of the answers lack depth and sound reasoning.

Under most circumstances, you should strive to condition yourself to seek out hated, cheap investments.

I've long been a proponent of timber as an asset class because it's basically the best of both worlds as an investment.

All of your wins, all of your losses, all of the good, bad and indifferent things that happened to you - they're all your fault.

A big market rally will likely be led by financial stock.

In the world of investing, information isn't just vital - it's a weapon.. and if you wield the weapon effectively, you win. You make money. You profit.

There are lots of reasons to sell an investment. Most of them probably have nothing to do with the quality of the underlying asset you bought in the first place or whether you believe it will go up or down.

Today I'm cooped up in an Alexandria, Virginia hotel room while my wife attends a National Association of Drug Court Professionals conference.

If you're not familiar with drug courts, and how they can save our criminal justice system huge amounts of money every year, you should read this brief article in the Economist about how drug courts keep drug addicted Veterans out of prison - by keeping them clean and sober.

I won't ruin the ending, but basically these courts seek to help people beat their addictions instead of throwing them in jail where they're not likely to get much of any treatment - and their rate of drug abuse is likely to increase. A novel approach...

While I've been answering many of these questions in a piecemeal fashion throughout issues of the Resource Prospector, I thought I'd once and for all cobble the information together in one place.

Like anything, if you're just getting started in buying gold and silver it can be a somewhat daunting process.

That's because there are about as many different precious metal vendors as there are types of coins, and it can be a bit of a minefield if you don't know EXACTLY what you're looking for, how much you should be paying, and perhaps most importantly, why you're buying precious metals in the first place.

I recently received a question from reader David W. which seems to encapsulate just about every possible angle of this topic: