Bumble

The damn thing about being right is that you still beat yourself up for not committing more. Last week I bought shorts on FTSE and various holdings in gold miners and instead of being happy I'm kicking myself for not holding more.

As to whether it will continue to rise, bear in mind: (1) there is a cyclical element to gold's price - it rose sharply in Q1 last year and still fell back; (2) governments are much more inclined to intervene than they were 8 years ago, either to prop up the stock market or to hold down gold, or both; (3) despite point 2, if the hedge funds smell weakness they will pile in and create a big bandwagon.

I don't set much store by studying charts. My usual approach is to build an altar to the god Plutus in my basement and sacrifice a virgin on it at midnight. There are not many virgins left in my neighbourhood, so the price may fall back for a while.

Gold is close to $1200 now. If it breaks through that price, it could go a lot higher quite quickly. If it consolidates back to $1170 over the next couple of days, it will be a buying opportunity. Gold miners are going crazy. I've not seen double digit gains in majors like this. Randgold is up 12%.

In dollar terms, silver seems to be holding below $15 today. Some of the volatility you are seeing is because the USD/GBP is falling.

The ratio is clearly all over the place and doesn't seem to have any predictive value. The most striking feature of the charts is how well the prices of gold and silver are correlated. This tends to support the idea that silver is 'poor man's gold' and that it enjoys a monetary premium.

You can get to this chart via

http://www.sharelynx.com/chartstemp/LiveSplash.php

then selecting PM Ratios > Gold/Silver

There are lots of nice charts on sharelynx.com.