The only thing more frustrating than a long bear market is a long bull market. Riding a great bull market is like riding a real bull. You are always in danger of getting thrown off. And once on the ground, it is hard to get back on.

Last week, we looked at the gold market. We bought when the metal was selling around $300 an ounce. Then, over a period of four years, we were able to buy in slowly and cautiously, each time the price dipped. But then, as the bull really started running a year ago, it ran right by us. We kept waiting for a pause so we could jump back on its back. Instead of pausing, the beast just ran faster. Now, it is flying so fast, we're almost afraid to touch it.

But the real money in investing is not made by dabbling...and then sitting on the sidelines. The real money is made by people with the courage to grab the bull's horns with both hands and hold on! In the bull market in stocks - 1982-2001, for example - the Dow ran up from under 1,000 to nearly 12,000. The last bull market in gold saw the price rise from barely more than $40 to $850 - a gain of more than 2,000%. And the most recent bull market in oil has already taken the price up 700%.

No, dear reader, it is not by trading in and out that you make a lot of money. That is only entertainment while making money for the brokers. Making the most of a bull market is like getting the most out of smoking; you have to start early and keep at it heavily...until it finishes you off.

The way to make real money is to take a big position in a big move, buy very low and sell very high. That means riding the bull market from beginning to end, which raises some vexing questions. How can you know when you're getting close to the end of a bull market? How can you know when it is time to get on and jump off?

If we had a foolproof answer, we wouldn't be writing The Daily Reckoning. We wouldn't even be human. It is not given to man to know the fate of his markets. The best we can do is to look over our shoulders at examples from history and guess. And our best guess is that that the bull market in gold has a long way to run, and your best bet is to hold on. Don't let yourself be tossed off by corrections, setbacks and bone-jarring bumps along the way.

Anther great bull market is taking place in India. The Bombay index is up 300% in the last three years. The major India funds have gained 80% in the last 12 months. And so, readers might want to know: is this the beginning or the end? Again, we have no sure answer, but we will make a guess.

The rise of the India stock market is part of a trend that probably has another 50 years to run - maybe 100 years. India is poor. Western Europe and America are rich. This disequilibrium only arose in the last 300 years. Before that, the average working man on the banks of the Ganges earned about as much per day as the man on the banks of the Thames or the Potomac. Our guess is that today's great disparity is fleeting rather than permanent.

Last week, an Indian entrepreneur came by the office. "Yes, share prices have gone up a lot," he explained. "But our companies are growing at 30% per year. Adjusted for growth, they are still cheap."

Our visitor had begun building cars in India. With an investment of only three million pounds he had set up an automobile factory. The motors come from Renault. The body parts are made locally from composite materials.

"We only need to see 1,000 cars a year and we can break even," he explained. "Of course, we don't have to pay high wages or a lot of social costs."

Someone should tell General Motors. Maybe someone already has. Word comes this morning that GM is hiring in India, even while it lays off thousands in America. That's roughly why wages are rising smartly in India, while they sag in the United States.

But will it continue? Will the Indian share market continue to soar? Or, will it tumble in a breathtaking correction? And here, yes, we are so happy to be of service, we can give you a thundering, decisive answer: yes! Alas, we can't tell you in what order.

Better yet, don't worry about it.

*** Lila Rajiva, trying to climb onto the bull's back:

"Bill: As a faithful believer in the doomsday scenario for the dollar and the final revenge of gold, I admit I am not having an easy ride. In fact, I think I have had a bit of a mauling. With some nervous selling across the board in the metals, and options expiration at the end of the week, the ride gets stormier.

"Of course, I'm still a dollar bear. What's not to hate?

"Massive trade deficits, staggering debt at all levels, a tumescent real estate market hissing into an inevitable slump, saber rattling in the Middle East, a war of words with China, oil bubbling steadily around $70, and inflation simmering under the cooked-up numbers the government spews as it sees fit...it's all a recipe for a plunging dollar.

"And way back in 2004, it seemed the dollar was taking that ride in a straight line down as it fell nine percent against the Euro. Some of us opened Everbank accounts and got ourselves a basket of mixed foreign currencies or other exotic goodies. Buffet was betting against the damn thing - how could we be wrong?

"But in 2005, Buffet and the rest of us sinners, had to dine on crow. The dollar strengthened, if it did not actually flex its pecs, erasing half its losses against the backdrop of continuing tight money policy and higher interest rates in the United States versus the euro area and Japan. The dumping of the European Union's Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands, also stiffened a few rickety vertebrae in the greenback's spine. Of course, it was merely a touching coincidence that corporations got to repatriate earnings in stronger dollars, courtesy of a convenient window created by Congress.

"Even the trusty little GLD ETF, which was supposed to cushion my dive into the big bad speculative world of metals, stayed down the whole year.

"Naturally, as a newbie I'd bought it just when it came out in November 2004. And naturally, after being heralded like the Second Coming, it sank almost immediately. On sundry Web sites, reports surfaced hinting darkly at dire manipulations, the lack of verification of its holdings, and all manner of sinister machinations calculated to strike terror in the heart of someone's whose last encounter with the metal was buying an ankle bracelet at a souk in Dubai. Equity bulls of our acquaintance cast a derisive eye at us. Gold? Had we forgotten that stash of 850 buck ingots from the eighties still moldering in our basement? I was ready to cave in and sell for what I'd bought it.

"But then as the year ended, the metals minuet ended and the action on the floor became hot and fast.

"Sleeping Beauty leapt out of her coffin and darted ahead almost 25% in a matter of weeks. Too much too fast? It seemed that way to me. I wasn't going to wait around to see that thing fall back just as fast as it had shot up. A profit is only paper, until you book it, right? I booked it.

"Yeah! Wait for the correction and ride it right back up again like a Ferris wheel. But market timing is never as easy as it sounds, which is why some gold bulls, like Doug Casey, of the International Speculator, will tell you that this isn't a market you can trade - the moves have been too fast. You drop out when it drops and you're liable to be left standing. You miss the big profits.

"And that's how it's been. The first correction came in February as expected, but the next leg up was so fast and furious that by April we were hitting multi-decade highs with hardly a pause along the way

"Too bad I wasn't on board. I was still figuring out the right moment to buy... and clearing the dust out of my eyes."

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.