Bill Bonner (The Daily Reckoning, UK Edition):
The Dow fell slightly on Friday. Oil ended the week at $77. The dollar went nowhere.

But gold rose to a new high – $1,146. Today it’s hitting more new highs above $1,160…

Whatever else may be going on, there’s a real bull market in gold. It’s a bull market that began ten years ago. If you’d bought stocks then, you’d have about what you have now… less inflation. If you’d bought gold… you have about 4 times what you had then.

Today, a quick glance at a chart shows gold looking a little toppy. Expect a correction. But remember, this is a bull market. In a bull market, you buy the dips.

Stocks, meanwhile, are in a bear market. In a bear market, you sell the rallies. This looks like a good time to sell – if you haven’t done so already.

“Take Your Gains,” says Forbes. And once you’re out of stocks, stay out until the bear market is over… probably at around 3,000 – 5,000 on the Dow. When the price of gold equals the price of the Dow, it will be time to switch.

We haven’t seen the last of this bull market in gold. It’s what you buy when you think government is making a mess of the monetary situation. You put your trust in gold as an antidote… as protection… as wealth insurance.

Are the feds making a mess of the monetary situation? Oh dear, dear reader… please ask us something harder. Trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see… Stimulus spending that turns the US into a Zombie Economy… Handouts to the bankers… gifts to the carry traders…

The feds are out-doing themselves… more below…

As for the bear market on Wall Street, investors are counting on a miracle… a ‘recovery’ that doubles corporate earnings in just a couple years. They think it’s “just like 1982”. Of course, it is just the opposite of 1982… see the table below.

Besides, there is no recovery… and profits will go down, as businesses compete for less spending.

The recovery may be all in your head, writes Robert Shiller, in the New York Times:

“Consider this possibility: after all these months, people start to think it’s time for the recession to end. The very thought begins to renew confidence, and some people start spending again — in turn, generating visible signs of recovery. This may seem absurd, and is rarely mentioned as an explanation for mass behavior late in a recession, but economic theorists have long been fascinated by such a possibility.

“Back in 1931, for example, The New York Times attributed the emerging economic cataclysm to a “mood of pessimism which had been carried to grotesque extremes.” In 1932, it compared reckless talk about “depression” to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.”

It doesn’t matter what anyone says. It’s a depression. It’s nothing like the garden-variety recessions of the Post-War period.

It’s a depression because of the nature of the work it has to do. It has to clean up 3 decades’ worth of filthy balance sheets.

Click here for the rest of Mr. Bonner’s insightful commentary at The Daily Reckoning, UK Edition.

Fortunately for Pickens, he has a plan to move away from volatile oil. It’s called the Pickens Plan. It involves converting US cars to run on natural gas instead of petroleum and devleoping a massive wind farm in Texas.

Floyd Brown at Investment U says Pickens has a history of being in the right place and the right time and profiting handsomely. Floyd has picked four stocks to help you follow Pickens’ lead into natural gas and wind energy…

T. Boone Pickens is a proponent of the much-debated peak oil theory. He believes the oil price shocks we have experienced this year are only the beginning. He sees much tighter supplies in the future.

“America is in a hole,” he told CNBC last month, “and it’s getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year – four times the annual cost of the Iraq war. I’ve been an oilman all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.”

“In 10 years, $5 trillion goes out of the country for oil. It’s nuts. It’s the greatest transfer of wealth from one area to another in the history of the world.”

Instead, he wants this money to stay in America – with a good portion of it going into his pocket.

His plan is simple. Cars need to be converted from crude oil and gasoline to compressed natural gas as soon as possible. And to replace the natural gas used in electrical generation, he advocates a giant wind farm stretching from Texas to North Dakota.

“America is the Saudi Arabia of wind,” he likes to say.

T. Boone Pickens Has An Energy Plan to Save Our Economy

To be sure, Pickens has an energy plan to save our economy – he is building the largest wind farm in America. It will generate as much clean electricity as two nuclear plants, and, best of all, with little negative effect on the environment.

His commitment to clean fuels has impressed the environmental community, prompting the Sierra Club’s director Carl Pope to say, “To put it plainly, T. Boone Pickens is out to save America.”

But don’t believe that he’s lost his focus on making money because he is in his 80s. “Money! First thing, it’s about money,” Pickens told Fast Company magazine in June.

“Of course, I’m also a good environmentalist. I can pass the saliva test. But I’m not going to go do a 4,000-megawatt wind farm for the environment first and money second. I’d rather go give money someplace else. You’re talking about $10 billion.” And what kind of return does he expect? “A minimum of 15%; it’ll probably be closer to 25%.”

Last year he also brought Clean Energy Fuels (Nasdaq: CLNE) public – a company that markets natural gas for vehicles. It designs, builds, finances and operates 170 fueling stations and supplies compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas. But what it doesn’t have is profits.

With Mr. Pickens owning 16 million shares, don’t expect that to slow this company down. Management is growing revenues at a rate of 25% per year.

I don’t have much taste for the shares of any company without positive earnings, such as Clean Energy Fuels. But the current downturn in natural gas prices has hit stocks in this sector hard. Today, a number of these gas stocks are cheap for the first time in over a year.

Natural Gas Stocks & Wind Power – The Pickens Plan

Two firms that specialize in natural gas exploration and production that have recently pulled back from elevated highs include:

• Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK), with a forward price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of only 9.
• Devon Energy (NYSE: DVN), which has a P/E of 9.

In terms of wind power:

• General Electric (NYSE: GE) is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of wind turbines. With over 8,400 installed worldwide, it provides power generation capacity of more than 11,300 megawatts. GE currently trades at a very attractive P/E ratio of 13.5 and a 4% dividend yield. It pays you to hold its stock.
• FPL Group (NYSE: FPL) is the diversified utility and power generator that grew out of Florida Power and Light. It leads the nation in the development and operation of wind power. With more than 45 facilities located in 15 states, it has a generating capacity of more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity.

This represents approximately 35% of the nation’s wind-generated power.

There are many ways that our country is working to free itself from its energy shackles, and I don’t know if America will embrace the Pickens Plan above all others.

But T. Boone Pickens has a history of being in the right place at the right time, and profiting handsomely. By following in his footsteps and investing like him, you stand to make a bundle as well.

Source: The T. Boone Pickens Way: How To Supercharge Your Portfolio