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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Juan Blanco, post: 1587435, member: 41665&quot;]InfleXion-</p><p>The source for that percentage (which may be ~1% now: data was from 2010) is a critically important study by the Erste Group, the first savings bank in Austria (since 1819) with about 17 million customers in the EU. Their report has been updated several times already. As Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge says it&#039;s &quot;<b>120 pages of fundamental information which are a must read for anyone interested in the yellow metal</b>.&quot;</p><p><a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gold-report-2012-erstes-comprehensive-summary-gold-space-and-where-yellow-metal-going" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gold-report-2012-erstes-comprehensive-summary-gold-space-and-where-yellow-metal-going" rel="nofollow">http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gold-report-2012-erstes-comprehensive-summary-gold-space-and-where-yellow-metal-going</a></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="color: #000000">Ronald</span>-Peter <span style="color: #000000">Stöferle</span> is young, but he&#039;s already got a relatively high profile/cedibility among better informed <i>so-called </i>&#039;Gold-Bugs&#039;:</p><p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/video/71857922-gold-price-to-increase-to-2300-says-stoeferle.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.bloomberg.com/video/71857922-gold-price-to-increase-to-2300-says-stoeferle.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/video/71857922-gold-price-to-increase-to-2300-says-stoeferle.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>I am curious <i>exactly </i>what (you think) will foretell and confirm &quot;the mania phase.&quot; Can you identify some real metrics? Look at other asset classes&#039; &#039;Bubble allocations,&#039; for example. (That is the point of this OP: &quot;Where are we now w/ Gold allocations?&quot; A baseline is necessary, as is historical perspective.) </p><p><br /></p><p>For prior allocation peaks, Stöferle&#039;s historical analysis indicates Gold was &gt;~20% btw. At <b>1% allocation</b>, we have a loooooong way to go before the Investor Death Spike occurs in a &quot;Gold Bubble.&quot; Yet Paper-Bugs already <u>declared</u> that, years ago:</p><p><br /></p><p>1) when infomercial advertising for Gold expanded across US cable channels at 2am (circa 2004)</p><p>2) when a Gold ETP appeared in the USA and vanguard retail investors began talking about/utilizing that option (circa 2006)</p><p>3) when the random American schlub (&quot;shoeshine boy&quot;) became aware of and started &quot;talking about&quot; Gold (circa 2007)</p><p>4) when HUGE battles appeared &amp; antigold tirades in many mainstream online investment forums &amp; financial industry propaganda (circa 2009)</p><p>5) when Gold became an asset-class that <i>normal/typical investors</i> began requesting of brokers (circa 2010) </p><p><br /></p><p>We can quibble about dates above, but this is what I&#039;ve witnessed from the inside: Gold (the beaten up red-headed stepchild) <i>as an asset-class</i>, is grudgingly accepted by more and more professionals. Hardcore Paper-Bugs still rail against it, but THEY look like goofy cranks, now: missed the boat, talking nonsense, the dying wail of wrong-way charleys. And Gold-advocates still include fringe-y nutters in their ranks... but legitimacy is slowly arriving with the mainstream investors (in PM ETFs.) A trend is evident - Buffett &amp; mf cos have to talk down Gold &#039;the competition&#039; Horrors! When will &quot;everyone&quot; finally sell their Gold, already: your stock broker desperately needs those nickels LOL</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m not firm in this conviction (the data&#039;s yet scant) but today&#039;s US households now have less than 4% of assets (and maybe as little as 1%) allocated to Gold. Again, only 3.5 million US households (3.05% of the US total) own ETFs. Nearly one-third (31%) of those folks owned <i>investment </i>real estate, btw: that Bubble still popping? </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve no data to suggest PM ETF exposure of <i>current ETF Householders </i>is greater than 7% (~250,000 US Households) and PM exposure might easily be less than 3.5% (~120k), close to the McKinsey &amp; Co. #. &quot;Where are we now w/ Gold allocations?&quot; gets that current baseline, IMO and subject-to-change. </p><p><br /></p><p><i>By the numbers</i>, we are very very far from a Bubble.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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