The other side:

I've been talking with my friends, most of whom know little about investing but have faithfully salted hundreds and thousands into mutual funds. They are all very frustrated. Some of them feel like they have basically lost their retirement.

They have a hard time believing me when I say that my portfolio has been looking much better since November. I tell them I've made 90% on Yamana, and over 60% on my other choices, at least on the money I threw in in November.

They ask why their advisors keep telling them not to go into gold, tell them that diversication and patience are the keys.

So I guess I can understand why these advisors are interested in gold investing...

As for diversification... large cap industrial metal miners are insanely cheap right now. So are oil plays. So are commodities.

It's the traditional "safe" investments that mutuals are heavily into that I'll stay away from for a while: banks, financial services companies, large cap consumer discretionary stocks.

I remember back when I held a lot of mutuals that a lot of them had heavy weightings in bank stocks, regardless of the sector they purported to represent.

The Fed should be publishing December numbers on foreign purchases of U.S. credit notes this week. It could be interesting.