Pundits: How do you get your parents to listen?

[tmosley]

I find that the easiest thing to do is to tell them that gold and silver are good to have in your portfolio at a level of at least ten percent as a hedge against inflation. You can show them the performance over the last few years (versus the DOW). You can also show them the charts talking about historical prices of gold versus silver, and suggest that they get into physical silver to benefit from the boom that will happen when it starts moving back toward the historical average as it becomes a monetary metal again (rather than an industrial one). You can also point them to the OCC report here: http://www.occ.gov/deriv/deriv.htm and let them see that the paper market is being manipulated. Once this news is incorporated and understood by the market, they will see that these paper shorts don't actually exist, and that much of the paper contracts aren't backed by gold, causing the money that was invested in paper contracts to flow directly into the pockets of those holding the physical product.

That triggers their greed sense. Even if they only put a small amount of their portfolio into silver, they stand to gain a lot (indeed, it would be enough for them to survive a crash, rather than starving in the streets), while they only risk not making much money on it, or losing a fairly small portion (since silver can't go to zero).