As investors flock to gold investments and stock prices decrease, would it be smart to buy stocks now?

One should not time the market when it comes to investing. While, the stock market keep going down recently, we will not know how long more will the stock market will continue to drop. Who knows, a vacinne could be available next week, and everything starts shooting up again.

Besides having a long term investment strategy, you will also need to know what specific investment strategy are you using. Is it growth investing, value investing or dividend investing. For example, if you are focusing on value investing, you will need to find the intrinsic value of the stock before investing in them. While stocks may look cheap now, but they might not be really cheap once you properly analysis them.

Therefore, I would not say whether it is smart or not to buy stocks now, but rather, based on your analysis, are the stocks of the value you are willing to pay for them. Do also note that a cheap stock may become cheaper for any reason.

This is a random (unforseeable) buying opportunity, but since the U.S. only starts to experience exponential C-cases, there is still much emotionally (media hypervole) triggered downward potential given the U.S. one being the most important stock market. Recovery will als last some time, but sometime into the future there could then also be abeupt upswing.

On the other hand: we can (financially) be lucky, when in crash phases we have money on hand, however the best approach to equity investing should be not to market time but cost averaging

by adding regularly.