The most basic thing everyone who wants to make money in this economy should understand is that we live in an artificially created boom-bust economy. The booms are driven by loans to consumers for the most part, but also to business and government. Those loans drive consumption, which creates jobs and increases prices, which creates higher wages and capital gains. All this is wonderful, until the "magic money" dries up.
At some point, consumers use up most of their credit. So, they start spending less money. This lowers consumption, which creates unemployment and decreases prices, which creates lower wages and capital gains. All this is painful, until the next boom comes!
Some industries are effected by this more than others. Trucking is an excellent indicator of where the economy is at on the boom bust cycle. Hence, the industries lack of overtime pay and reliance on unemployment benefits. Truckers can go from 70 hours a week to 7 hours a week in a very short time. Healthcare, on the other hand, seems far less effected by the ups and downs. This can have a tremendous impact on how people view their work.
The stock market, of course, is always anticipating the next boom or bust. That pretty much drives volatility in the market, as I understand it. There are other factors, but in general, that seems to be the main thing.
So, if you can track the progress of the economy in its boom bust cycle, then you can buy stocks, for example, in the bust and sell them in the boom. I wouldn't call that investing though. It's really just a bet on where the economy is headed.
As I understand it, most people make money in the bond market, by buying and selling bonds, not by carrying the note. So, it's the same rule as with stocks: buy low and sell high. Although, bonds tend to be up when stocks are down and vice versa. But, I've never taken advantage of that.
Gold is a commodity. Naturally, gold, like most commodities will never drop to zero, like stocks can. On the other hand, it could lose a lot of its present value. Gold appears to be extremely over inflated in its price, because people with money around the world are afraid of losing their money. So, to preserve it, they've put some of it in gold, which has driven up the price to spectacular levels. However, without that fear driven buying, gold prices would plummet to catastrophically low levels, because gold buying is mostly for electronics and Jєωelry, not savings. This situation of fear based buying is temporary. I'm not claiming to know where gold is headed next. All I'm saying is the price of gold is where it is at, not because of some actual use for gold, but simply because folks have lost a lot of faith in regular forms of savings. However, if they ever get that faith back or if the fed racks up interest rates, I think gold prices are gonna go way, way down, really fast.
If you look back at the 1980s and you understood that gold bubble and were paying attention as conditions lead to this current one, then you at least had the knowledge to buy into this latest run up on gold prices. However, if you aren't that knowledgeable, you'd probably do well to just learn from this latest run up and study it, in preparation for the next one.