Why does the world flock to one precious metal in tough times?

And, thus, just as with the stock market, making money off gold investments can require perfect timing, which is hard to come by. After hitting its high in March, the price of gold fell more than 28 percent, dropping to $736 on Sept. 11. Yet as the global financial crisis has gotten scarier and scarier, the movement of gold's price has been mostly upward. As one gold trader in Denver said this week, "We are experiencing tremendous demand. Everybody here is working 12-hour days. The phone just never stops ringing."

On Monday, as the stock market rallied amid coordinated efforts by major governments to stabilize the financial crisis, gold was slipping. But as John Reade, a UBS AG metals strategist, said in a Bloomberg report, gold is the "relic of last resort" and is still seeing significant buying from investors skittish about problems in the global economy.

(Close-up of a stack of gold bars by Stockbyte/Getty Images)