Some of the deep pocket guys apparently are paying little attention to the so-called pitfalls of investing in GLD, since a number of them have taken huge positions in the stock. For example:

Soros' fund owns 5.24 million shares of GLD, worth 638 million bucks as of June 30. Paulson holds a massive 3.4 billion bucks worth of GLD. Yes, that's billion. Harbinger owns 100 million worth. Elton Park recently bought 6.58 million shares. And on and on.

As has been reported here several times before, there were no PM ETFs not that many years ago, so the deep pockets guys back then wanting to take a position in the PMs either had to buy bullion or more likely the stocks, first the majors, then the juniors.

All that money now going into GLD would, imo, have gone into the majors and they would be really sky high as they were in the past and so would the juniors.

Maybe I'm blind but I've maintained for a long time that bucks going into the ETFs hurt the majors and the juniors in several ways and that they were probably set up in part to accomplish just that.

At least Paulson was gracious (smart?) enough to put some bucks into the majors: Anglogold ($1.7 billion), Kinross ($567 million), and Gold Fields ($297 million) and Novagold ($144 million). Can you imagine if there were no GLD. Where would he have put that 3.4 billion?