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GOLD BULLION - A BELATED CHRISTMAS GIFT

Dr Prieur du Plessis

I am spending a few days of the Christmas break at a village along the coastline of the Cape Town Peninsula. It is quaint, picturesque and simply an ideal location for enjoying quality time with the family. The only drawback is that it does become quite windy on occasion - at best not a highly predictable event. This reminds me of the erratic behavior of gold bullion - you just never know with what action the yellow metal is going to surprise you next, making it infamously difficult to predict short-term movements.

And true to form, just as traders were bargaining on a quiet Christmas period, gold again startled with a $15 jump, taking the price well clear of the $800-level. Interestingly, gold has never in its history recorded a month-end price above $800 and only closed above this level on two days during its 1980 surge, namely: $830 on January 18, 1980, and $850 on January 21, 1980. That, however, represented a blow-off with the price plunging to $737.50 a day later and falling further to $659 by the end of January.

It would seem that gold bulls may very well have reason next week to toast bullion saying good-bye to 2007 having achieved the $800 month-end milestone. There is, however, quite an important difference between 1980 and the present situation. In 1980 gold was in a parabolic rise, whereas since the low of $250 in 2001 gold has been rising methodically, mapping out consistently higher lows as shown below.

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/duplessis122907.html