RE:are Gold and Gold miners a SAFE trade if There will be a period of time where the mining stocks also get hit hard. There are a lot of people margined to the hilt and this will cause forced selling. But they will recover and go higher with the physical metals even if the stock markets continue going down. Its hard to say at what point the pm stocks reverse, but happen it will.
Such a scenario is not part of my short term (6-12 months) outlook. The Fed put is still at work....money creation. When that fails, we will see the big one!