Soros actually liquidated quite a bit of gold recently and his gold mining shares of Barrick Gold. While I agree with you that gold is by far the safest long term investment, people who are interested in timing investments might consider that gold still needs a capitulation phase before rising higher, which it came close to experiencing last year.
At least from Soros' actions, this appears to be what he's expecting. Some people think that central banks will raise rates to intentionally make things bad after the US election so that they can push their next agenda. I'm not one for conspiracies, but Soros seems to think that there's little upside to gold, or he thinks something else is a much better opportunity than gold.
My suggestion for people is as long as you get in cheap, you don't need to focus on timing.