Call it a quirk or call it smart or call it crazy ... and it's been called all of the above, but I and many others LOVE gold. I've never been able to quite get it off of my mind or out of my portfolio. And right now, with equity markets rising, and with gold now at around $870 an ounce and me being nowhere NEAR convinced about a forthcoming bull market, I'm looking at gold again.

Not that you should listen to me, or anyone else who's entertaining the idea of trying to time this—or ANY market. (Exhibit A is my ill-advised November 2008 buy of XLF, the Select Sector SPDRs Financials ETF). The market COULD easily be back on track and headed to 15,000. But I'd say that consensus still has this as a bit of a false bull run, with us circling back around at some point to test the lows.

So given that everything else in my financial life lines up nicely with an equity bull market, the gold hedge doesn't seem like such a bad call, particularly vis-a-vis the dollar, which may be looking more and more like the Zimbabwean dollar the way Obama, Geithner and the good-times spending crew are going to have us printing money. That Zimbabwean dollar, by the way, is trading at $4.5 BILLION to a U.S. dollar. And that's the buffed-up official rate.

You've got some different options on gold-there's the behemoth ($31 billion plus) SPDRs Gold Trust (NYSE Arca: GLD) and iShares Gold Comex Gold Trust (NYSE Arca: IAU), which has about $1.8 billion. If you like the share-play angle (the one I'd always used exclusively until the bullion funds became an option), you've got Van Eck's Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSE Arca: GDX) on the ETF side, with $2.38 billion in assets of its own. Ironically, the reason people like GDX is that it sometimes shows more volatility than the price of bullion itself (which may feel counterintuitive with the way gold-mining companies hedge the price of gold. But that's the stock market for you, I guess).

To give you an idea, GLD is currently trading at $85.27 a share (more or less on par with 1/10-of-an-ounce of gold, minus the tiny amount of gold that has been sold off over the years to pay the 40 bps fee). It has a 52-week range of $68.81 to $98.99. GDX, on the other hand, is currently trading at $33.20 and has a 52-week range of $15.85 to $51.84. So at a glance, if you want more of a boomerang effect, consider going GDX. If you want the shiny yellow stuff with your name on it in a vault, consider going for the gold bullion ETFs. Wait a bit and there will be at least one other U.S.-listed option as well, from London-based ETF Securities.

We'll Miss You, Greg Newton

The small world of ETF punditry has suffered a mighty blow with the passing of Greg Newton (of a heart attack last week). The ebullient Aussie was all piss and vinegar, and his blogs were as witty and insightful as they were irreverent. Naked Shorts is still up and as biting and funny as ever for those of you who wish to take a gander and spend some time remembering Greg.

We were close with him here at IndexUniverse.com, where Greg was a sometime-contributor and always kept things interesting for us. Back in his days at MARHedge, he brokered the deal that had us purchase the ETFR publication. He seemed happier, and a little wilder when he went off to do Naked Shorts—which was just as he wanted it.

We'll miss you Greg. I'm sure you're already stirring up some trouble wherever you are.