Hi there, there's one catch:

in a stock market downturn, gold (the physical metal) has typically outperformed right from the start of the crisis, e.g financial crisis 2008/2009, WHEREAS most gold mining STOCKS went down in-line with major stock indices – this despite the fact, that their "underlying", physical gold, appreciated in price.

So, how can this be?

I have 2 explanations / hypotheses:

1. Index funds and index fund-like mutual funds get sold. And because many gold mining stocks are listed on major exchanges like NYSE, Toronto, London and even NASDAQ, they get sold as well. If one plots the S&P 500 against the GDX or the GDXJ (junior gold miners), one can see, that after 2008 the gold mining stock indices went down in-line with the S&P (or DOW) for roughly 1/3 of the downturn. Then GDX/GDXJ decoupled and heavily outperformed – after real price discovery took over again. This, while the price of the physical metal decoupled from day 1 of the stock market crash.
2. Actively managed funds faced redemptions and where forced to sell out in order to generate liquidity while at the same time preserving the %-distribution of their portfolio positions.

What now? Everyone has to do his/her own DD, but here is how I am positioned as of now: I own physical Gold (roughly 10% of my portfolio) as a hedge against the nex stock market crisis. When the market crashes next time, I will wait for the gold mining stocks to come down in-line with major indices (hypothesis: this will happen again like after 2008) and then "change horses" from physical gold to gold mining stocks after roughly 1/3 of the downturn based on fundamental analysis / cheapness and momentum.

BTW: I like royalty / streaming companies a lot!