Having come across the name Suki Cooper many times in the last year or so while reading what investment banks have to say about the gold price and, being a fan of HBO’s True Blood, it was kind of interesting to see what someone named “Suki” actually looked like.

The Barclay’s analyst makes the same points that gold market naysayers were ignoring last month – that none of the underlying factors that drove the gold price to its 2011 heights have gone away, most importantly strong physical demand from Asia and real short-term interest rates that will be negative for years to come.

Here’s a ginormous infographic from numbesleuth.org with all kinds of interesting details about the barbarous relic gold that, suddenly last week, seems to have come alive again after limping to the finish in 2011 (click on the image to enlarge).

From: Number Sleuth

Bloomberg reports that billionaire investor George Soros, who sold nearly all of his gold holdings in the first quarter and then repurchased some in the third quarter, thinks gold could be about to enter a bear market.

Of course, this just might be another case of “talking your book” since, after Soros exited his gold position, he used a large portion of the proceeds to buy gold stocks. Even after its recent swoon, gold bullion has gained more than 10 percent since the first quarter, while, over that same period, gold stocks have lost more than 10 percent.