The Fed, Fear & Gold
"One of the strongest drivers of the Fear Trade in gold is real interest rates. Whenever a country has negative-to-low real rates of return, which means the inflationary rate (CPI) is greater than the current interest rate, gold tends to rise in that country's currency."
"You need to use gold for what it's best at: portfolio diversification...You have to be a bit of contrarian. Buy it when everybody hates it, sell it when everybody loves it. Our suggestion is to have 5 to 10% of your portfolio in gold or gold stocks and rebalance once a year. You might also get some additional benefits by rebalancing quarterly. That's like playing chess with the market as opposed to rolling craps."