Which demographic is driving the greatest percentage of gold purchases in the United States?

If you look at the demographics of who is buying gold and silver coins in the United States, the vast majority of them are professional, college educated, maybe post-graduate degrees as well, upper income, 40-65 years of age, men and women. These are very sophisticated investors who are buying in as part of a portfolio. The people who would be called, “Gold bugs, or survivalists, or the other extremes” are 10% of the gold coin market in the United States. So gold is a legitimate market and those numbers have actually been pretty much the same since the early 1980’s, when I first started seeing them. There has always been a mainstream interest in gold. However, the 10% extreme is much more vocal.

These metals actually have always been mainstream metals, but the mainstream has often masked. Let’s admit it, a lot of people like gold and silver exactly because of its secrecy. I’ve been at meetings where people have said, “With all the problems with all these large trades, the gold market should be more transparent, people should admit and make public how much gold they’re buying, selling, and holding.” I say, “Ok, let’s start with you.” They go, “I’m not going to tell you.” Oh, so there’s some threshold in your mind, above which people should disclose what they’re doing and below what they don’t have to. So you basically want to discriminate against wealthy people or institutional investors.