The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets
Peter D. Schiff · 2008 · 302 pages
Schiff hands you a specific, actionable way to move money out of dollar assets and into gold, silver, and foreign stocks. The forecast that justifies doing so, a dollar collapse and inflation spiral through the 2010s, did not happen.
The one idea
The book's argument is that the 2008 crisis was not a normal recession but the start of a decade-long reckoning for the U.S. dollar. Schiff, writing as Euro Pacific Capital's president, walks through decades of trade deficits, a shrinking industrial base, and a Federal Reserve he expects to keep printing money to paper over the damage. His conclusion: dollar-denominated assets, cash, bonds, most U.S. stocks, are a losing position for the next ten years, and the investor's job is to get out of the way.
The escape route he lays out is concrete. Move a meaningful slice of the portfolio into gold and silver (10 to 30 percent of the total, by his own numbers), buy stronger foreign currencies and foreign equities directly through brokers who can execute on local exchanges, and lean into commodities as the dollar's purchasing power erodes. He is specific about mechanics: which of the six ways to hold gold carry counterparty risk, how mining stocks split into four risk tiers, what a Perth Mint certificate costs versus a bullion dealer's markup.
The last third of the book pushes past portfolio construction into lifestyle: a chapter on saving in non-dollar terms, cutting debt, and stockpiling goods against future price increases, and a chapter on whether the reader should consider a second residency abroad. The unifying idea is defensive: preserve purchasing power by holding almost nothing that depends on the dollar staying strong.
What it actually teaches
The method isn't a sequence of trades, it's four moves Schiff wants a reader to make at once, in different corners of a portfolio and a household budget.
ACCEPT THE DECOUPLING THESIS
Before allocating anything, Schiff wants you to internalize his read on inflation: the government's CPI understates it (he pegs official CPI at 5 percent while estimating real inflation at 7 to 10 percent as he wrote this), and the dollar's reserve-currency status, cemented at Bretton Woods in 1944, is what has let the U.S. borrow at will. His case is that foreign creditors eventually stop financing that borrowing and the dollar's value 'decouples' downward. Everything else in the book is a hedge against that one call.
BUILD THE GOLD AND SILVER STACK
Schiff names six ways to hold gold and silver: physical bullion, Perth Mint certificates (2.25 percent service fee plus a $50 admin fee, no storage cost), exchange-traded funds and notes, GoldMoney's digital gold, commodity futures, and mining stocks. He gives an explicit target: 10 to 30 percent of a total portfolio in gold-related holdings, with 20 to 50 percent of that slice in physical metal and the rest in mining equities, split 40 percent majors (he names Newmont Mining, the only gold miner in the S&P 500 at the time, selling roughly 5 million ounces a year), 30 percent mid-tier, 20 percent junior producers, and 10 percent exploration and penny stocks.
GO FOREIGN WITH STOCKS AND CURRENCY
Chapters 7 and 8 push readers to hold foreign equities directly rather than through U.S.-listed ADRs, on the logic that ADRs still settle in dollars and don't hedge currency risk. He walks through what to look for in a broker who can execute on a local foreign exchange and flags 'pink sheet' foreign shares as a trap. Chapter 9 extends the same logic into emerging markets for readers willing to take on more risk for more currency upside.
CUT DOLLAR EXPOSURE AT THE HOUSEHOLD LEVEL
Chapter 11 turns the same thesis into personal-finance moves: pay down variable-rate debt before rates rise, refinance any adjustable mortgage to fixed, and route new savings into non-dollar assets rather than a bank account, since 'your hard-earned savings will lose value as inflation rises and the dollar declines.' He also recommends stockpiling goods you'll need later, using a corn-flakes example: a box that goes from $3 to $4 in a year is effectively a 33.3 percent return on buying it early.
What it looks like Monday morning
A reader who takes this seriously checks two numbers Monday morning: what percentage of their portfolio sits in dollar cash, bonds, or dollar-denominated funds, and what percentage sits in gold, silver, or foreign assets. Schiff's math says the second number should be materially higher than most portfolios run, with 10 to 30 percent specifically in gold-related holdings.
The more durable habit, separate from whether his dollar-collapse timeline played out, is the mechanical checklist he leaves behind: know which of the six ways you're holding gold and what counterparty risk each one carries, know whether your mining stock exposure skews toward majors or penny exploration plays, and know whether a debt balance is fixed or variable before rates move against you.
| Portfolio slice | Allocation |
|---|---|
| Total portfolio in gold-related investments | 10% to 30% |
| Of that slice: physical gold (some held, some offshore) | 20% to 50% |
| Of that slice: mining stocks | remainder |
| Mining stocks: major producers (e.g. Newmont, Barrick) | 40% |
| Mining stocks: mid-tier producers | 30% |
| Mining stocks: junior producers | 20% |
| Mining stocks: exploration and penny stocks | 10% |
These are Schiff's own figures from the 'Parting Words' section closing Chapter 6, not a general market benchmark.
People buy physical gold as a way of preserving wealth, avoiding risk, and maintaining liquidity rather than making their wealth grow.Peter D. Schiff, The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets
Where it fails
- The central forecast missed by a wide margin. Writing in mid-2008 with gold near record highs and oil close to $140 a barrel, Schiff predicted a 'decade of frugality' from 2010 to 2020 driven by a collapsing dollar and 7 to 10 percent inflation, and told readers that gold and mining stocks would enter, within 5 to 10 years, 'a mania that makes the NASDAQ bubble seem like a warm-up.' Instead, the dollar index rose roughly 30 percent from 2011 to 2015, U.S. inflation stayed mostly below 2 percent for most of the decade, and gold itself peaked near $1,900 in 2011 before falling to roughly $1,050 by 2015, a drawdown of about 45 percent, not a mania.
- The book is a single 2008 printing with no updated numbers. Edition reviewed: 1st edition, copyright 2008 (ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0). The specific figures that anchor the method, CPI at 5 percent, oil near $140, the Perth Mint's $50 admin fee, and the named mining companies at each risk tier (Bema Gold, Northern Orion Resources, and others among the juniors) are frozen at that moment. Several of the named junior and mid-tier miners have since been acquired, delisted, or renamed, and a reader checking today's prices against 2008 reference points will be working from stale anchors.
- It assumes capital and account access most beginning investors don't have. The method calls for a self-directed brokerage relationship capable of executing on local foreign exchanges, a bullion dealer relationship (or a Perth Mint account requiring a $10,000 minimum plus fees), and enough capital to run a four-tier mining stock allocation. Despite the 'Little Book' branding aimed at a general audience, this is not a starter portfolio for someone without an existing brokerage account and meaningful savings.
- The last two chapters drift from portfolio strategy into survivalism. Chapter 11 recommends stockpiling cigarettes and liquor as future barter goods and specifically suggests buying a handgun and ammunition as an investment, reasoning that 'there is plenty of lead in bullets.' Chapter 12, 'Pack Your Bags,' walks through whether readers should establish residency abroad as a hedge against U.S. decline. Neither chapter is about how to hold assets; they dilute a book that is otherwise specific and mechanical with material closer to crisis prepping.
- The case studies only show the trades that worked. The book leans on Schiff's own pre-2008 crash call, repeated in the cover blurbs, as evidence his broader dollar thesis should be trusted. It does not show a losing call or a hedge that failed to pay off, so a reader has no way to weigh how often his directional certainty has been wrong, which matters given how far off the book's central 2008 forecast for the following decade turned out to be.
Who it is for
Buy it if
You want a concrete, mechanical primer on the different ways to actually hold gold, silver, and foreign equities, with real fee structures and risk tiers spelled out, and you're building that allocation as insurance rather than betting the portfolio on a specific dollar-collapse timeline.
Skip it if
You're looking for a base-rate reliable macro forecast, a beginner's first investing book, or a portfolio construction guide you can act on without an existing brokerage relationship and real capital. The book's own central prediction for the decade after publication did not play out as described.
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