Because there's no printing press you can turn on to make more gold, it is virtually immune to inflation, devaluation and manipulation by government.

Therefore, unlike paper money, which the government and central banks can (and do) print at the drop of a hat, gold holds its value in good times and bad.

That's what makes it such an ideal investment in times of inflation, deflation and economic or political uncertainty.

For example, when the investing public begins to worry that the stock market has reached its peak, that the real estate bubble has burst, that inflation is outpacing long term interest rates, that once-secure pensions at major companies are falling by the wayside, then they will begin to rush wholesale into gold.

But the investing herds don't lead — they follow. So they need the prompting of CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the network nightly news and other mainstream media outlets to convince them to move into gold.

So the good news, for those investors who act decisively...today...is that there's still time to get on board, before the gold train officially leaves the station.

Although gold has more than doubled in price during the early stages of this bull market, there is still much room for it to run: The metal would have to more than triple in value to merely match the inflation-adjusted peak reached in 1980.

So the key question is...what underlying forces in the global economy are responsible for gold's precipitous rise?

First, gold is the only metal that serves double-duty as a currency. (Silver's role as a currency is now relatively minor, with most silver demand coming from industry.)

In many cases, gold is the currency of last resort, the money investors turn to when the world's major economies fail to keep their economic houses in order. And, unfortunately, the poster-child for mismanaged economies is the United States. Huge fiscal and trade deficits have forced the Fed and Congress to borrow money at prodigious rates — over $2 billion per day — just to keep the ship afloat.

The private debt load built up by the nation's citizens has grown in equal proportion to the huge pile of debt built up by the government. The stock market crashes in 2000 and 2001, combined with the unprecedented shock to the economy created by 9/11, encouraged the Fed to embark on a highly stimulative monetary policy. Between 2001 and 2003, it dropped interest rates to 1% — their lowest levels in over 40 years — and then kept them there for an extended period of time.

And while that policy, combined with successive rounds of tax cuts, had their intended stimulative effect, they did so at the expense of our economic future. Low interest rates and a weak stock market ignited the real estate market. Steep increases in home prices, suspect lending policies and the ascendance of the home equity loan allowed consumers to go on a credit-fuelled consumption binge that...until recently...has kept the economy going.

But now the cracks are starting to spread. The Fed's relentless spate of measured interest rate hikes has burst the real estate bubble, putting the breaks on consumer spending and economic growth. Meanwhile, surging monetary growth in the U.S. and across the world is sending the prices of assets — especially commodities — spiraling higher.

In this environment, in which the world’s currencies are racing each other to the bottom of the hill, gold stands out as the ultimate asset and currency — the one against which all others can depreciate. As a result, the metal has established strong long-term uptrends in terms of not just the dollar, but every major currency.

If this pattern persists and if all the fundamentals lined up against the dollar begin to act in unison, then we may be well on the cusp of an uptrend in gold that threatens the previous highs, and brings the entire metals complex along for the ride.

So how can one take advantage of the bull run still to come in gold and the rest of the metals? Well, there are several ways...

The most direct way, still, is to invest in bullion. You pay a slight premium over spot prices to cover the costs of storage and your investment tends to follow gold in one-to-one fashion.

The same is true of the gold and silver Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), paper instruments which allow investors to take fractional interests in the metals. Besides minimizing the storage costs that attend physical gold ownership, the ETFs play a vital role in the institutional market, allowing pension funds and other investment pools a way to play commodities. (Trading rules prohibit them from doing so via the physical or the futures markets.)

If you want a little more leverage to the price of gold, the major mining companies are good investments. Like all stocks, investments in these companies are primarily investments in management; but in a major gold bull market, even poorly managed companies will do well.

That being said, if you want to truly maximize your leverage to gold prices, the place to be is in the junior explorer and producer space. These companies are the mavericks of the industry, the risk-takers that make discoveries on green-field projects and use new geologic models to turn brown-field projects into operating mines. Their relatively tiny market capitalizations give investors the opportunity to truly cash in on a commodity bull market.

Pure exploration plays defy analysis via traditional valuation metrics. Instead, they are bets on the résumés of their principal players, the price trends for their projects’ underlying metals and the overall quality of those projects.

Though inherently more risky than established players in the resource sector, junior mining stocks offer investors the opportunity to realize triple- and, in some cases, quadruple-digit gains on their investments. One good discovery hole, or one strong uptick in metals prices, can send a junior's share price to the moon.

While no stock-picking strategy is foolproof, Gold Newsletter has produced an enviable track record over its three decades of publication. We've found big winners even during market bottoms, and unearthed companies that have multiplied as much as 4,396% on the back of the current bull market in precious metals and commodities.

Best of all, as exciting and lucrative as this era for gold has been for our readers, the best is still to come. The multi-year trends that have underpinned the yellow metal's latest renaissance will take many more years to play out, giving those who subscribe to Gold Newsletter today ample opportunity to find companies that could double, triple, and quadruple in value...and beyond.