If you are hoping prices will rise, good luck as there are over 10 million coins mined already and the trickle from mining (7200 per day, soon to be 3600 per day) doesn't affect supply much. So price is mostly affected by demand, not by supply-side issues like mining. You can also directly buy coins if you are so sure prices will rise.
Well, that is debatable.
It's partially self correcting. If 80% of the GPU miners are limited by electricity and average electricity cost is x allows for 50% overall profit at current values, increasing difficulty by 200% will push all of them out of the range of being profitable. 80% drop in GPU mining should, in turn, push difficulty back down, at least temporarily.
Of course eventually the majority of mining will be ASIC, and the impact of the last few die-hard GPU miners leaving won't really cushion the difficulty increases- but all in all I don't think the doom and end of GPU mining will be super sudden- it'll be more of a gradual difficulty increase as various tiers of GPU miners quit- first the GPU miners who overpay for electricity (bye bye California), next the GPU miners paying fairly average prices, then the GPU miners paying very cheap electricity, and last of all, if ever, the GPU miners who get "free" electricity, one way or another.
You can also directly buy coins if you are so sure prices will rise.
Very true, and probably the best thing to do. There is just some psychological difference, at least for me, between buying hardware that may or may not pay off as opposed to buying coins which may or may not increase in value. Even though buying coins directly is probably the smarter choice, I feel more comfortable buying harder, because it has some intrinsic value beyond all the speculators and hoarders.