Is it a good time for a small-time individual investor to buy gold for the long term?

Yes, now is a good time to buy. A couple of the other posters are saying that supply is huge. Actually, all the gold mined throughout history, the above ground inventories is only 120,000 to 140,000 tonnes. That's would fit into a space of 19 meters cubed. That's slightly smaller than the 2 dimensional space of a tennis court. That is not a lot of gold. The amount of unmined gold is estimated at 50,000 tonnes. So where these posters are getting that there's lots of gold, I have no idea.

Gold has a way of telegraphing upcoming problems (the markets in general are forward looking). Gold shot up to $733/oz., but the rise was too quick and that kind of a rise always has a correction. Gold did indeed correct and fell back to the $550/oz. range. She is now starting to pick back up again.

Gold is also a store of value. As inflation rises, gold rises also and this is an asset that preserves buying power. The other posters are saying gold will fall and new mining techniques will keep prices low. I disagree. As tensions in the middle east continue, crude oil prices rising, continued geopolitical uncertainty, gold will flourish. I believe gold has now entered phase III of a secular gold bull market. Gold just came off a 20 year secular bear market. What makes people think that a gold bull won't last? Based on inflation-adjusted dollars, gold could (and I believe it will) reach as high as $2000-$2500 per oz. It's trading around $640/oz. now, so it's still cheap.

What get's me is this - gold has only been in a bull market for about 5 years (market cycles run for many years, usually 15+) and people are saying it's in a bubble and over valued. Yet, the Down is now trading only 1000 point below it's all time high and people are saying stocks are cheap. I'm sorry, but their evaluations are flawed. Stock valuations and p/e's are still way above normal levels. The stock market (U.S.) has a way to fall before valuations and p/e's come back into normal levels.

Gold is a good buy and now is a good time to buy.

probably is.

Unless they finally figure out how to make it cheaply from lead or find lots of it that nobody knew about, gold will just increase steadily over time. Its used in industry and jewelry and coins.

Yes. Simply because gold will never lose its value.

Actually you're wrong. Not that long ago Gold was down quite a bit that it cost more to mine it than to sell it. That is why many gold mines in the Northwest Territories of Canada had to close. Right now the price has gone up so much due to theirs, and other mines, closures. Now that the price is so high more mines will be built, suppply will go up, and price will drop again.

I would always stay away from Gold because of the cycle it takes. Because when it drops, it drops fast.

There's plenty of gold in the world. The problem is that the major mining corporations (and governments as well) hoard large quantities in order to artificially keep the price up.

In the long term (20 years plus), developments in space mining are going to kill the price of precious minerals (there's a lot of gold in a decent sized asteroid).

In the short term, usage of gold for both computer parts and for jewellery (particularly in India) will keep the price around current levels. I don't expect it to go much higher though.

Yes, buy it on dips...the trend line over past 4 year rally says that it could dip as low as $500 and it might do that if Japan Yen-carry trade unwinds. It has been artificially low priced do to worlds banks selling their gold in favor of US Treasurys and therefore creating too much supply...they are done selling and are now holding what they have.