yer bad investment if you buy stupidly and when high, same could be said for anything including housing, if you bought housing last year in some cities at their peak you would be well over $100k+ behind not including the interest rates your paying for something well above current market price, then also if you bought a house with flammable cladding you would be well behind and be paying that off for along time in the future.
if you bought at the right time your ahead, just like PM. You failing to look at sensible buying rewards vs stupid bad decision buying. you could point out examples with pretty much anything where people bought in at the wrong time take big loses and say its a bad investment, yet there are examples with many where people have been smart and made money likely on the same examples.
Buy and sell at the wrong time is when its classed as a bad investment, Buy and sell at the right time its a good investment. Like anything, you just have to use your brains a bit more with PM.
If you cant make money when gold goes up $300 an ounce in a few weeks, Or Silver goes up $6 in a few weeks then its you being a bad investor rather than PM being a bad investment.
80% of my stack was bought around $9-$10 an ounce, you cant tell me that is a bad investment?. And this isnt even near the amount I had when I sold a big lot at $38 an ounce in 2011. Ive only bought a couple of Kg's since then enough to prop my stack up a bit.
I was a teen buying this stuff, used to buy a few ounces of silver when my pay check came in each week and did that for a few years, people said I was stupid doing that, PM is a bad investment they said. lol. I bought it as it looked cheap to me and it was. Glad I didnt listen to those people, I didnt buy a single ounce when Silver skyrocketed, Why? because it didnt look cheap any more, and that thankfully was the case. A bad investor can make a good investment look bad.