Agreed and it can be very hard sitting through the corrections. I personally use a core holdings and trading position strategy (15% to 20%).

The advantage is it forces you to buy more stock when it is low and sell some when you have profits thus over time lowering your total cost of ownership.

The disadvantage is that you may be out of your trading position and only holding the core if a stock really takes off.

As well all assets must be eventually sold to realize a profit. If governments ever get their act together again and start acting responsible this will include most of our gold too. Making a decision to buy is usually much easier than the the decision to sell. This is why a lot of investors in the tech boom didn't make any money. They held all the way up and all the way down.

I think it will be safe to hold gold for a long while yet but I am constantly watching for when.