What potential problems (or "Aftershock") do you foresee for the markets, and why is it so important for investors to own physical gold?

Bob Wiedemer:Although I think it's important to have precious metals as part of your portfolio just to have an uncorrelated asset in there to offset some of the risk with stocks, bonds, and real estate. Again, precious metals being uncorrelated with those. There's another reason to have gold... is if you do have a big problem, if you have an "Aftershock" like problem, gold is particularly valuable. It becomes a particularly good investment and particularly valuable, but if you have an "Aftershock" type situation you are also likely to have problems in the markets.

And I've said, there's going to be very likely market holidays, here, or at other places, there are going to be issues with ETFs, there are going to be issues with the markets. That becomes sort of a problem in the sense that a part of the reason you buy gold is to avoid that. So, if you're involved in the market, in an ETF, it sort of goes in contrary to one of the longer-term reasons you should hold gold. So, in many ways to hold gold for that, for the long-term, is physical. Even if short-term might be a little more convenient, than to have an ETF, long-term, clearly one of the big benefits of gold is to have it in physical form so it's not subject to a market holiday or something like that.