About this site

Who made this

I'm Paul Berg — the Tech Doctor, and owner of Technology On Call, a technology consultancy in Granby, Connecticut. I am not a financial professional, and nothing on this site is advice.

Why it exists

I own some gold, through ETFs. When I tried to understand why the price was doing what it was doing, I found two kinds of writing about it. There was sales material, written by people who wanted to sell me gold. And there was analysis, written for people who already knew the vocabulary. There was almost nothing in between.

This is the thing I wanted to read and couldn't find.

What it's for

Understanding, not trading. The test I wrote against was simple: could someone read this and then follow a conversation with a financial professional without nodding along blankly? That's the bar. Not "should I buy" — "what are these people actually talking about."

It is not a signal, a recommendation, or a forecast. The backtest on this site shows that the composite reading describes conditions reasonably and predicts the price badly. That finding is printed rather than buried, because a model whose backtest is hidden is not a model, it's a sales pitch.

A disclosure that matters

I hold gold through ETFs. That is a reason to be sceptical of anything here that sounds enthusiastic, and it is exactly why the site works as hard as it does at saying the unflattering things — that gold pays you nothing, that it fell during the 2020 crash, that someone who bought at the 1980 peak waited forty-five years to break even in real terms.

If this site ever reads like it is selling you something, I have failed at the only thing I was trying to do.

Getting in touch

[email protected]