Interesting Quote on Gold - From the Tocqueville Gold Fund Annual Report

"It would not take much of a diversion of capital from paper assets to physical gold to drive the price well into 4-digit territory. Global financial assets exceed $70 trillion. The market cap of physical gold, assuming all central bank gold is for sale (which it is not) is around $1 trillion. If 1/10% of global financial assets chose to migrate to physical gold, it would represent a call on two years of global mine production. That trade would be impossible to execute at current prices. Of course, the real market cap of gold, taking central bank reserves out of the picture, is substantially less than $1 trillion. It is worth noting than in previous bear markets for paper assets, the ratio of gold to paper was not 1 to 70, but 1 to 4 (1980) and 1 to 5 (1932). Backup math for all of this is contained in our recent paper, Beardlsey Ruml’s Road to Ruin, that is posted on our website, www.tocqueville.com."

Disclaimer: I am an investor in this fund.