Originally Posted by DTK

Another, less sinister, possibility:

The US economy has been slowing and may well have already entered recession. Recessions always drive the stock market down. Thus, guys like Soros and John Paulson are dumping stocks.

Also, if they believe the US Fed is going to rev up the printing press again, buying gold makes a lot of sense. Printing more dollars, by definition, weakens the dollar. By extension, gold and all other dollar-denominated commodities (like oil) will have significant upward pressure on their prices. Thus, they're buying gold.

Makes sense to me.