Gold, and somewhat for silver, acts a bit differently than other commodities because of it's history as base money.  Obviously, some investors want to hold gold for reasons of capital preservation; but the largest gold holders (central banks, soverign wealth funds, etc) do so mostly as a liquid investment.  Intended to be sold in times of fiscal stress on other fronts.  For an example, mutual funds have to have some cash to buffer the many trades in and out of the fund on a daily basis; but some of the largest funds will also have a small percentage of the fund in physical gold.  They do this should there be a 'run' on the fund by spooked investors, but the managers don't want to sell equities assets in order to pay out to the panicing retirees heading for the exit.  Holding some small amount of gold allows the fund managers of actively managed funds the option of selling the fund's gold without being forced to sell the fund's equity assets into a falling market.  I think that this is what we have been seeing for the past two days with both gold & silver dropping so much.  I don't think that gold bugs are selling, nor individuals who hold gold as a personal 'insurance' against fiscal policy uncertainty.  This also implies that such fund managers don't believe that the drop in the stock market is more than a panic, otherwise some of them would be selling equities into the market and buying the gold sold by others, and thus there would be a tempered balance.