The pessimism is so thick you can cut it with a paper knife. Stocks are testing the lows of early summer. The second-quarter gross domestic product got a big downward revision Friday morning.

Yet I remain convinced we're not in a double-dip recession, and I think stocks should be accumulated at these levels. Here are my three reasons.

The first is gold. If the global economy was really heading toward another big leg down, we wouldn't see gold creeping back up to within a couple percentage points of its all-time high. (As loyal readers know, gold has been my "best-idea" investment for quite a while, so seeing it perform well is an end in itself for me. However, right now, I'm talking about what gold's rise implies for the rest of the world.)

Consider gold's...