Pharmaceutical stock Merck (NYSE: MRK) may have languished for the past two decades, but its product portfolio has all the makings of an outperformer over the next 10 years. With income seekers struggling to find safe ways to generate inflation-topping returns, more investors are likely to turn to physical gold as a store of value and protection from inflation. Having followed gold stocks for over a decade, I'm of the opinion that a multiple of 10 times cash flow represents a fair valuation for mining companies.