If part of your portfolio isn’t already allocated to gold, you’d be remiss not to start building a position. At least that’s what a number of luminaries in the world of investments told attendees at IndexUniverse’s 4^th Annual Inside Commodities conference.

Behind their thinking was conviction that developed-world governments are so deeply indebted that the value of their currencies will only diminish—relative to gold at least. The problem is likely to get worse, meaning that gold’s bull run isn’t over, panelists at the conference held on Dec. 8 at the New York Stock Exchange said. As it stands, gold is up 600 percent in the past decade to more than $1,700 a troy ounce.

Virtually all agreed that the worst economic downturn since the 1930s isn’t over yet, and some there, like Marc Faber and Peter Schiff, are adamant the real crisis has yet to truly unfold. It was a question of degrees, and either way, gold looks attractive. None of the panelists was putting a price on the rally, but one audience member set the tone when he asked: “Does gold have an appointment with $2,000 in 2012?”

“Precious metals are headed higher; significantly higher, perhaps explosively higher,” David Kotok, chief investment advisor at Cumberland Advisors, said during a panel on the dollar and inflation. Cumberland manages more than $2 billion in assets for individuals and even more for a number of institutions.

What’s striking is that for all the talk about gold these days, its rise over the past decade looks smooth and steady on a price chart compared to, say, the technology bubble of the late 1990s. That’s true even since financial markets collapsed in 2008. To those who need a reminder, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index’s peak on March 10, 2000 was preceded by near-vertical gains in the preceding year.

For chartists, gold’s lack of sharp, “parabolic,” price movements that historically have been consistent with bubbles is a technical affirmation of what everyone seemed to be saying at the conference.

When IndexUniverse Director of Research Dave Nadig asked the audience at the “Precious Metals and Gold” panel he was moderating whether gold prices might fall next year, no hands came up. Only a small minority help up their hands when asked if they or their clients held gold.

“Gold isn’t in a bubble,” said panelist Mary Anne Aden, of the “The Aden Forecast,” a financial newsletter she produces with her sister Pamela Aden from their home in Costa Rica. “It’s in the quietest bull market we’ve seen in years.”

No Price Is Right

For all the bullishness surrounding the yellow metal, few people at the “Inside Commodities” conference were predicting how far the rally might go in terms of price, whether that’s $2,000 a troy ounce or considerably higher—though the latter possibility seemed to be where most of the sentiment was.

Cumberland’s Kotok said that with central banks in the developed world expanding their balance sheets from an estimated $3 trillion to $8 trillion by buying bonds to keep interest rates low, inflation will be created and gold will rise as the buying power of currencies from the dollar to the euro weakens.

Moreover, there’s increasing evidence central banks in the developing world have become net buyers of gold.

Add to that the increasing interest in physical bullion ETFs such as the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) and the iShares Gold Trust (NYSEArca: IAU) among everyone from retail investors and hedge funds, and the gold juggernaut seems to be full of steam.

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