Gold Silver Ratio

Gold rises for eighth day as euro crisis worsens

LONDON: Gold rose for an eighth day on Wednesday, set for its longest stretch of gains in nearly five years and trading less than half a percent off record highs after European leaders mulled the option of a Greek default and Ireland's credit rating was cut to junk.

European Union leaders will hold an emergency meeting on Friday after finance ministers acknowledged for the first time that some form of Greek default may be needed to cut Athens' debts and stop contagion spreading to Italy and Spain .

The euro held around four-month lows against the dollar, although risk-averse investors took a breather in their recent battering of the stocks and bonds from more indebted euro zone nations such as Italy, Portugal and Spain.

Surprisingly strong Chinese growth data supported industrial commodities and broader equity markets, keeping the dollar under pressure and giving gold, which usually moves inversely to the U.S. currency, an additional boost.

Spot gold was up 0.4 percent on the day at $1,570.66 an ounce by 0850 GMT, having risen in the last seven sessions and set for an eighth day of gains and a gain of 5.9 percent, something it has not achieved since mid-October 2006, when it rose for nine days in a row.

COMEX August gold futures were last up 0.6 percent at $1,571.70 an ounce.

"It's a pretty well-trodden safe-haven story. While the issue has been bubbling away, it hadn't been acute enough to drive people into the strongest safe-haven. That situation has clearly changed in the last couple of days," said RBS analyst Daniel Major.

"In the last few days, risk-aversion has been strong enough to offset the strength in the dollar, but it will really depend on how the macro events pan out as to whether gold can be carried higher or not," he said.

ETF HOLDINGS RISE

Reflecting the heightened investor demand for metal, global holdings of gold in exchange-traded products witnessed their largest daily inflow since early April, driven by a hefty rise in holdings of metal in the SPDR Gold Trust , the world's largest gold-backed ETF.

For the first time since early May, total gold holdings are showing a net inflow so far this year following a 20-tonne inflow into SPDR and a 0.1-tonne rise in ETF Securities' London-listed gold funds.

Gold/Silver ratio — on its way to 50 to 1? | PeterLBrandt

Resistance is at 46, then 50. Gold could advance to $1650 with Silver dropping to $33

Silver bulls all sing from the same hymnal. One of the songs they sing insists on a Gold/Silver ratio of 20 to 1. After all, the song goes, the ratio was set by the Spanish at 15-1/2 to 1 in the 1500s, traded at about 28 to 1 when, in March 1964, the U.S. Treasury stopped issuing Silver Certificates, and was “set” at 18 to 1 when President Nixon officially announced that the U.S. would no longer redeem U.S. Dollars for Silver or Gold.

So, the Silver bulls claim, a Gold price of $1,550 would equate to a Silver price of $77.50. The only problem is that the non-Silver-bull world does not know the song .