Saudis Buy Gold In Secret

Think about it.  If you wanted to buy say . . . 150 tonnes of gold, would you tell anyone?  Surely, putting the word out would raise many questions, perhaps the first one being, why?Imagine telling everyone in advance that you are setting out to buy billions of dollars worth of a particular stock.  Do you think that would drive the price of that stock higher, thus foiling your effort to make a good deal?  Of course it would.  So, when we at Lear Capital hear that the Saudis, already rich with the largest oil reserves in the world, have doubled their gold holdings, one has to wonder why.  News came as a surprise as the World Gold Council updated its research dating back to the first quarter of 2008.  When the WGC tried to contact officials for a statement, none was forthcoming.Some speculate that the find was due to an accounting revision.  Others say the Saudis stepped up their buying.  Please!  Why speculate that it was an accounting revision when the obvious conclusion is, they bought more gold without telling anyone.  No one setting out to buy tonnes of gold is going to make the announcement ahead of time, especially a central bank.  It seems every day we find more and more evidence that another major buyer understands the relationship between inflation and gold and the threat debt is to the world economy.  We sit and wonder why gold continues to climb the gold charts while secretly central banks, institutions, and just more people scramble to own gold.No longer can we ignore the evidence that gold coins as investments are becoming one of the most sought after protections against world economic uncertainty.  ATMs now dispense gold, Central banks like China and Saudi Arabia's are mysteriously accumulating gold without detection and mint supplies are unexpectedly running dry.One closing thought.  If central banks deem it necessary to increase their own gold holdings, maybe we should all be regularly increasing our own postions as well.