I steal most of my best ideas from the giants in the commodity world.

Hopefully you're well aware of the main reason that I prefer to buy physical silver - but here it is again...

Despite the dip in gold stocks, my colleague Jason Cimpl recently closed out a winning trade in this hidden part of the gold market.

As gold continued to rise in 2011, here were the three gold stocks that benefited most.

Mr. Cramer and I actually agree on gold's direction. But I want to emphasize the point: knowing why you're invested in a certain sector is at least as important as knowing which sector to invest in.

And it's my personal belief that Jim Cramer's over-the-top, made-for-TV investment analysis could be detrimental to someone who invests in gold on his advice.

His reasoning to buy gold now has almost nothing to do with gold's main trend. I'll quote Money News quoting him:

""Gold stocks peaked 30 days before gold peaked," Cramer said on CNBC, referring to gold's record high of $1,432.50 an ounce on Dec. 7.

"Now look at gold stocks going up, even though gold (itself) is doing nothing.""

Okay, I have several problems with Cramer's analysis.

The biggest one is that it's not...really true at all.

Yesterday, the Fed said it was prepared to move on new stimulus if the economy weakens further. What's more, the Fed's statement that inflation is below levels it wants to see suggests that further easing is coming. That's a clear indication that the Fed is still worried about deflation.

I suppose it's a good sign that the Fed held off on new easing action. But the Fed also failed to sound a confident tone about the economic recovery, which I think is mistake.

Of course, we know the economy isn't great. But most economic data has improved over the last month or so. And it should be understood that there is no magic bullet that puts millions of Americans back to work. It's going to take time, re-training and probably some government incentives.

"Gold Loses Some Appeal"

That's the headline from a story in The Wall Street Journal just a few days ago, on September 10, 2010.

Gold dipped 0.4% on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange to $1,246.50 an ounce.

That's still close to the dollar denominated high of $1265 reached in June.

I just bought some physical gold during the dip back in July, and I do plan on buying during future dips - but I wouldn't recommend buying gold necessarily at this point.

Investing in gold is often called a “fear trade.” In times of crisis, it’s believed that gold will hold its value, and even rise, while the value of paper currencies and other assets fall.  

If you bought SPDR Gold ETF (NYSE:GLD), which seeks to track the price of physical gold, 2 years ago, you’d be up around 36%.   

The S&P 500 is down around 15% during that time.   

You probably already know that gold hit a new all-time high yesterday at $1,200 an ounce. And even though other traditional measures of fear – like the volatility index (VIX), bonds and even stocks – didn’t move much today, the move in gold can’t be ignored.