Your guess is as good as mine. I personally expect severe inflation despite the immediately deflationary effects of this market crash. I suspect Bernanke will way overprint. Of course the wildcard is, how much can he print in 3 months, and (assuming Bush actually steps down peacefully) will the next president retain him? How soon will this inflation become apparant and push gold and commodities back up? Jeez, I would have expected it a lot sooner, but I also expected the housing crash to happen sooner. I’m no good at timing things, and gold and commodities got hammered on Friday as badly as the stock market, so maybe I’m way early on that bet. So maybe dollar costing will work for you. If prices still drop from here, you can buy more “on sale”. But in a 3 – 5 year time horizon, I’m in full agreement with you. Likely good returns eventually. Maybe you want other commodities besides just oil, particularly agriculture. People will cut down on oil use. All they gotta do is trade the Escalade for a Prius. But people will always eat, no matter how bad the economy. But that’s just me…