"I have seen plenty of comments telling us that gold will not rise during an inflationary period but will rise in anticipation of inflation. "
Of course gold will rise during an inflationary period, noone here has ever stated otherwise.
What I have argued (based on the data which is very obvious) is that gold stocks won't necessarily outperform relative to bullion itself or other commodities and commodity producers during inflation.
For example, gold stocks as a group clearly under-performed bullion in the late 1970's but outperformed (in the expectation of inflation) during the late 1960's. See the chart below.
Second example: HUI performance from 2001-03 clearly outperformed HUI performance from 2004-08.
It's about producer profitability, and those profits typically decline during inflation because production costs are rising faster than the gold price.
