Last night, I dined with an old friend of mine who runs his own manufacturing company. Of all my buddies, he’s by far the most investment savvy. In 2008, he suffered his first portfolio loss, losing 15% compared to 42% for the MSCI World Index.

My good friend, Maurice, a Lebanese-born entrepreneur, still refuses to buy gold, despite my constant warnings about the dollar, long-term inflation and the debt super-cycle possibly imploding.

Since 2003 when gold was trading around $350 an ounce I’ve been urging him to buy gold; he admits to making a mistake not owning gold but refuses to buy the metal at these lofty levels. He thinks gold will eventually implode and drop 50% of more very quickly once stocks form a bottom. Obviously, I completely disagree.

For one reason or another, I think there’s many more sophisticated investors like Maurice who have yet to pounce on the gold bandwagon. And smaller investors are still out of the market for the large part. Increasingly, net supplies are running thin as gold coins sales skyrocket; imagine what can happen when everyone climbs aboard this gold train?

My view is that gold prices - regardless of central bank selling, IMF rumored sales – will soar at least $100 an ounce or more in a single day, probably this year. The scope for a huge upside crash lies in the cards as investors finally come to realize that we’re heading into double-digit inflation over the next five years, possibly sooner.

Gold prices are correcting again this morning and are set to open below $950 on the April contract. This comes as no surprise since we’ve just enjoyed a big rally over the last several weeks briefly piercing $1,000 an ounce last Friday. In this bull market, gold peaked at $1,033 intraday last March.

In a gold bull market – and this is the Mother of all gold bull markets – investors have been rewarded buying the metal on the dips or in the midst of corrections. Here’s such an opportunity right now. Gold should hold above $900 in this correction.

Of all asset classes and investments in the world there’s none I feel more confident about than gold over the next 12-24 months.

The scope and depth of unprecedented global fiscal spending and massive bank bailouts will propel inflation back to the forefront eventually. It’s “inflate or die” for global central banks.

The United States and other governments have totally lost control, bailing out banks that are insolvent and spending money like it’s water; any monetarist worth his or her salt should be alarmed by the size of Treasury and European government bond issuance in 2009 and 2010. And in all probability, the United States will spend trillions on several more New Deals before the economy finally bottoms.

Finally, as a side note, I do expect global stocks do post another big rally again. This won’t be the start of a new bull market because the structural problems affecting the global economy and U.S. domestic consumption will take at least a few years to untangle; in a counter-trend bear market rally I don’t expect gold to decline. Initially, any optimism on banking restructuring will hit gold - but only briefly. Optimism that accompanies a rally implies inflation expectations are returning and that can only be bullish for gold.

Maurice, though a successful investor and a good friend, is wrong. The macroeconomic forces driving gold prices are staggeringly bullish, even amid a brutal asset deflation. Buy gold.