I do wonder about gold shares and what they will do if the markets really tank badly.

Yep. Me too. Unitl recently I was all in cash, thinking (as I still do) that we were in an equities market bear rally that was breathing its last. But then I got bored (danger, Will Robinson, danger), wanted to buy something and saw how gold/mining stocks had been performing.

For a good while, the precious metal stocks seem to have almost ignored the upping and downing in the DOW/FTSE/etc. and just barrelled upwards, and I'm hoping they'll keep doing the same for a little bit longer - just long enough to see whether the markets will go back to tanking or will find new strength and take off upwards with new strength.

My money is on the DOW, FTSE and co. runnng out of steam and getting panic sold down to new, grim lows. If it looks like that is starting to happen I'll probably hold gold for a while, periodically taking profits and putting them into bonds or cash.

Some people are saying that we've just seen the small/midcap correction upwards and we'll now have a breather before seeing the blue chips correct up in the second leg of the "new bull market" (their words). I'll be surprised if that happens, but if it becomes obvious that it is I'll take profits more often and see if gold is still ignoring the rest of the market.

I'll also try to keep from getting bored.

At the moment I'm a bit under 20% in gold, but I think I'm going to up that towards 30%, particularly if a tempting little dip comes along.

I do know what you mean about the enthusiam of the bugs, though.