Renowned bond investor Bill Gross, the manager of PIMCO's Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, just shared his top investment picks with Barron's. Leading the savvy investor's short and selective list was gold.

Why is a bond bull keen on investing in gold?

It's because Gross sees gold as a stellar inflationary hedge as global central banks attempt to reflate their economies.

Gross explained that while it looks like loose monetary policies and the deluge of dollars will continue for a while, at some point both will have to stop and "when all this money printing by central banks ends, it won't be pretty."

Gross sees trouble brewing in the artificially-priced U.S. Treasury market.

"The Fed is buying 80% of the Treasury market today. It is remarkable to think that when the Treasury issues debt in the trillion-dollar-plus category, the Fed ends up buying most of it. The Treasury sells it to banks and primary dealers, who sell it back to the Fed at a higher bid," Gross explained.

"This is very different from the free-market capitalism we've come to know. And it will continue until inflation exceeds the upper end of the central bank's target of 2.5% or, by some miracle, we get real economic growth," Gross continued.

The artificially priced bonds leave investors to question if investing in them is worth the slender reward, given the paltry yields from a bevy of bonds except high-risk junk bonds.

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There are plenty of reasons for you to have some gold stocks in your portfolio.

Governments are stockpiling record amounts of the shiny metal. Mints are pumping out new coins as fast as they can. And the Fed under "Helicopter" Ben Bernanke is wallpapering the world with greenbacks, pumping out $85 billion a month until...well, who knows when?

But there's more.

The Europeans have joined the party by bailing out their weak sisters with hundreds of billions of euros.

And the Bank of Japan just announced a $1.2 trillion bond purchase program for 2013 and $150 billion per month after that - almost twice the size of the Fed's folly.

Now the yahoos in Washington are threatening to spill more blood over the debt ceiling.

All this spells big upside for gold prices in 2013...and the companies that produce gold.

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Anyone investing in gold should recall that before the financial crisis in 2008 central banks were dumping the yellow metal - when it was trading for less than half of where gold prices are today.

But that certainly has changed in recent years.

In 2012, the world's central banks added the most gold to their reserves since 1964. Net official gold purchases added up to 536 metric tons, a gain of 17.4% from the previous year according to a report from Thomson Reuters GFMS. The estimate from the World Gold Council for such purchases is similar at 500 metric tons.

Central banks are forecast by GFMS to purchase 280 metric tons in the first half of 2013 alone.

That's good news for anyone investing in gold.

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Our ever-popular Periodic Table of Commodity Returns has been updated through 2012.

Investor Alert readers love this chart as it shows a decade of results across 14 different commodities, providing strikingly rich information in a very familiar format.

Last year, 11 commodities rose in value, with wheat rising as the top crop after seeing a significant decline in 2011. It was a similar rags-to-riches story for the next few leaders, including lead, zinc, natural gas and platinum, which all climbed double digits in 2012 after falling in 2011.

Only three commodities declined over the year: Crude oil fell by 7% after rising 8% the previous year. Nickel declined for the second year in a row. In 2012, the metal lost 9% and in 2011, nickel fell another 24%.

Coal was the worst-performing commodity in 2012, falling nearly 17%. Coal's been going through a rough spell lately; in fact, the commodity has not been king for five years (although it did record a 31 % increase in 2010).

As you can see from the table, commodities often have wide price fluctuations from year to year given the many factors affecting supply and demand, such as government policies, union strikes, and currency volatility.

That's why when it comes to commodities and commodity producers, many investors "leave the driving" to active money managers who understand these specialized assets and the global trends affecting them.

Take gold and gold companies, for example. After investing in the mining industry for decades, we've taken note of several facts about gold that continue to surprise our investors. Here are four of the latest:

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