In the long run, gold probably is a better investment than the stocks. The metal never has to worry about all the hassles involved with mining it. It only has to worry about what people think it's worth - and the stocks have to worry about that as well as all the issues involved with mining. Still, I trade for fun, and just trading GLD would be barely more fun than watching paint dry. So I look for intermediate trends, and play the individual stocks when I think the time is right.

Investing in gold became easy when they created GLD a little more than 8 years ago. Since then, the metal and the stocks have tracked each other pretty well with 2 notable exceptions - the 2008 market crash, and the recent period between April 2011 and May 2012. In the first case, the stocks played catchup after the crash & outperformed for about a year. Since early May the stocks have outperformed, so it looks like the pattern may repeat.