True, but the markets prices assets at "Net Present Value" and often has long time horizons for their calculations. Think about an insurance company's portfolio

True, but the markets prices assets at "Net Present Value" and often has long time horizons for their calculations. Think about an insurance company's portfolio. It will need assets to balance against liabilities which include human life insurance policies. Some business insurance policies can be for even longer time frames, think nuclear power plants. To balanced against those liabilities part of what you need is an investment with a similar time horizon. Now, the gold or whatever ore these companies mine may not have that horizon, but their company stock and some of their company debt certainly will. And since both their stock and debt valuations will be tied to the ore they mine and return, some of that correlation will find its way back to the price of gold, platinum, etc. But the price of gold will be impacted even more directly than that. A large percentage of precious metals are held for their store of value rather than their value in industrial uses. If, as an investor, I know that over then next 30 years the price of my investment will drop 20% or more, I plug those numbers into the NPV equation, and I get the hell out of that position untill the price comes down and is in line with what I'd pay for the metal almost at the cost of an industrial commodity. That's of course a simplified version of how it'd all play out, but the broad strokes are there. How long would you hold onto your home mortgage if you knew that at some point, you're not exactly sure when, but at some point you're home's value will plummet?