your are right to be skeptical of TA in the more general sense and from experience buying into small companies that have high growth potential is the only way to make the big bucks. however you do have to catch the right trends, so being too stubburn can cost you big time as well, My gut & history tells me gold is the place to be, I'm not so certain about commodities despite the great fundamentals, am just worried that too many economies are going to implode and that means falling consumption so am not prepared to take the risk, otherwise not to bothered about the whole inflation/deflation debate at this stage and what happens to the dollar, even Peter Schiff says that there will be a deflation in terms of gold