Investment Club: Our best-laid plans for September aren't entirely dead, but we have to be boring and wait and see September was another lacklustre month for the Investment Club, with none of our well-laid plans coming to fruition. The club's unit price meandered down 5p to £3.24 - plunging along with UK Government debt prices. We had intended to acquire shares in Scottish & Southern ­Energy (SSE), anticipating its share price backing off from its current highs. This did not materialize, and we were left sitting on the ­sidelines as the supplier's shares continued to climb. We are very reluctant to ­venture into shares at current ­levels, however, as the FTSE 100 has had a ­significant run since 5 March 2009, when it reached a low of 3,529. Since then it has had three leg-ups, and we are into the fourth. The initial climb, from its March low to 15 April 2010, was a rise of 2,296 FTSE index points. After a fairly precipitous decline of 1,002 to 4,823.53 points, the second leg-up was about half the first at 1,267 points to 6,091.33 in February 2011. Another precipitous decline to 4,944.4 was followed by a climb of 1,015.2 points to 5,965.6 by March 2012. Finally, it dipped to 5,260.19, before commencing its fourth ascent to 5,742.07 points by the end of September. While the FTSE has seen higher lows on each correction it has not made higher highs as yet. Also, each leg-up is becoming progressively shorter and the market looks mature and vulnerable. The Dow shows a similar ­pattern, but with higher lows and higher highs, suggesting a true bull run. However, one of the tenets of Dow Theory is that a bull run on the Dow is only confirmed with a simultaneous upward trend in railroad stocks. However the modern day railroad stocks" index, the Dow Transportation, reached a high of 5,368.93 on 2 March this year and has been drifting down ever since. So the Dow's bull run is also vulnerable. All this makes us very wary about stocks at current levels. One possibility though, is gold. It has had a fairly substantial correction, but has now begun to waken up. The possibility is that should the FTSE and Dow Jones bull runs peter out then gold might be the must-have asset. In addition, the US Federal Reserve is once again scattering money from the printing presses, which should benefit gold. Staying with this line of thought, how do we take advantage of a rise in the price of gold? One possibility is Randgold Resources. It is the UK's largest- listed gold miner with a good track record of delivering growth in line with forecasts. The shares plunged in value in March this year from 7,565p to 4,596p following a military coup in Mali, the West African nation where Randgold's flagship Loulo mine, its Gounkoto operations and its Morila joint venture are located. However, they have since bounced right back. The downside is that its price to earning ratio is very high at 21, and the gold price is due a correction from its recent run up to $1,791.95. As the club has not altogether abandoned last month's investment choice of SSE, this gives us two investment opportunities in October. The plan, once again this month, is to wait and see if a buy opportunity presents itself. Very boring, but in the end might save us a lot of money.