Friday marked the beginning of a highly expected market correction that has brought precious and base metals substantially below last week's multi-year peaks.

NYMEX gold for June delivery fell to a low of $679 an ounce a level it hasn't seen since May 8th. The precious metal has now lost $49 since reaching a high of $732 in electronic trading on Friday, which was the highest price seen since 1980.

And it was the same story with the rest of the metal markets.

Intraday lows saw July silver at $13 an ounce -- copper at $3.46 a pound -- platinum at $1264.20 an ounce -- and palladium at $354.25 an ounce.

Despite these numbers it would be foolish to conclude that today's price drop would signify a sharp reversal in the broad five year uptrend that has pushed metals to multi-decade highs.

The fact is the fundamentals of the metals bull market are still intact.

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While the majority of metals may experience further short-term dips, the long-term outlook is still quite bullish.

Take gold for example. 2006 has already been a banner year for the yellow metal. Gold has increased as much as 38.7% so far this year.

Going twelve months back, gold has increased 75.6%.

Now as a long-time gold and gold-stock investor and speculator, I have been following this gold bull market since it arose from its own ashes back in late 2000 and early 2001 when the yellow metal was trading in the $250s

Back then there were scores of forecasters calling for sub-$200 gold. And only a radical minority believed a global commodity super bull market was being born.

But with gold now up 160% since its April 2001 multi-decade low, the bull is hard to refute.

The same exact thing is true with the rest of the traded metals.

Precious and base metals have experienced stellar increases over the past months fuelling the interests of investment banks and mutual funds to jump on for the ride.

Today’s sell off is nothing more than a pothole on Bull Market Street. It catches our attention but won’t stop anyone from driving down it.

Metals overall have looked overextended for a while and were overdue a correction. It’s a fact of the markets…nothing goes straight up. Heck, take a look at the tech/internet boom of the late 90s.

And it’s no different now.

The bull-run will certainly continue as investment demand increases in the face of geopolitical uncertainty and rising oil prices.

Today the gold market saw a 6% correction. We could see a pull back up to 10% in the near term during the typically quiet summer period. But over the long term gold prices will continue higher.

Gold has been known and used as a store of value since prehistoric times. And it’s highly unlikely that humans will ever see it as worthless.

So you have to recognize that gold will never be worth $0. As a result, the downside risk to owning physical gold is limited.

If things shape up like I’m expecting them to, you’ll be highly rewarded by owning gold.

- Mike Schaefer