Jim Rickards defended holding 10% of your portfolio in gold on Fox Business this week. Dagen McDowell aggressively challenged his argument that gold is the equivalent of an insurance policy for your wealth, but Rickards pointed to thousands of years of history supporting his investment strategy. Rickards also stuck with his forecast for the gold price to hit $10,000 per ounce sooner than later.

When people say gold is up, I don’t think of it as up. I think the dollar is down. In other words, you get less gold for your dollar, so the dollar is really down. If gold went to $10,000 an ounce – which I do expect – I wouldn’t think of it as a rise in gold, I would think of it as an 80% collapse in the dollar…”

Video Length: 00:07:33

Highlights from the interview:

“I definitely do [recommend buying gold]. For a long time, I’ve recommended about 10% gold. Don’t go all in… It’s kind of like insurance. It’s like fire insurance on your house. Nobody wants their house to burn down, but heaven forbid if it does, you’re glad you have the insurance. So have a slice of gold, along with stocks and bonds and cash and other assets…

“As far as gold is concerned, people say it has no yield. Take a dollar bill out of your purse or wallet. It has no yield… If your income is in dollars [and] if people lose confidence in dollars, then your income goes away…

“It’s not an argument [that currencies will go bust], it’s five thousand years of history… If you choose short time zones, yes [currencies are fine], but if you look at a longer time, including a hundred years…

“When people say gold is up, I don’t think of it as up. I think the dollar is down. In other words, you get less gold for your dollar, so the dollar is really down. If gold went to $10,000 an ounce – which I do expect – I wouldn’t think of it as a rise in gold, I would think of it as an 80% collapse in the dollar…

“[The rise to $10,000] could start tomorrow, it could be about three years from now. We have an unstable financial system. I don’t know when it’s going to collapse, but collapse is inevitable. That’s the easy part. You can see that coming. The exact date – I don’t know… I think having insurance and protection of preserving your wealth is a good decision…

“There’s money in Europe that’s 800 years old… They’ve been around since the 13th century. You talk to them – and I have – ‘How do you preserve wealth through the 30 years war, the Napoleonic wars, Louis the XIV, etc.’ They look at you and say, ‘A third, a third, a third.’ One third land, one third real estate, one third gold…

“I think of [gold] as money. If you want money, have some gold…”