RE: Very different times Don't be mistaken, hedge funds are making a killing in these markets. What they are doing that the ordinary investor is not doing is that they are playing both sides of a trade (long and short). They especially like the TSX now, given how many companies they can short and get their way of the stock just going down - look at the charts of most TSX stocks and notice the down trends, somebody is shorting and making money.
When it comes to gold, your best bet is just buy a physical gold trust or one of those solid ETFs that actually have the gold backing such as GLD. It appears that when a gold company gets to the mining stage, you need to get out, just too much problems (especially with lower grade after all the high grades are already mined). The only way these gold miners will make any money now is to keep the gold the mine and just let the gold price keep rising then, sell at a future date - just get bank loans to fund operations instead of selling the gold immediately and let the banks hold the gold as collateral for the loans to fund operations.