A lot of air time being given to Berkshire's investment in $GOLD, but it's less than 0.2% of BRK's equity capital; worth about $0.23 per B share. AAPL is worth $47 per B share. A 1% daily change in AAPL's stock price is worth more than double the entire $GOLD investment.

On an $800 billion asset base, there is no real utility to the GOLD investment at the current size (as a hedge or as some sort of macro view on gold itself). Maybe it becomes much bigger, but it's currently a meaningless position

My guess is $GOLD is a Todd investment, but Buffett has been very wary about inflation throughout his career (he was very worried in the 1970's and also in the mid-2000's). He even bought miners in the 70's (one of the few investments that didn't work out well during that time)