Gold News

The Wrong-Hand Side of Gold

With Euro-rates stuck near zero, which currency will be next on the right-hand side of XAU...?

FOR THE FIRST five years of its life, the European single currency was as good as gold, at least as far as the gold market was concerned, writes Adrian Ash at BullionVault.

Gold priced in Euros moved barely 10% away from its average price between Jan. 2000 and Jan. 2005, even as Dollar-gold prices rose by more than one-half. And in this, the Euro more than equaled its predecessor, the Deutsche Mark.

During the last 10 years of the DM, the daily Gold Fix in Frankfurt had moved 20% either side of its average. US Dollar prices moved in a 50% range.

Since the middle of the last decade, however, the Euro's gold-tracking stability has deserted it. Gold's pre-Euro peak against the Deutsche Mark is also a distant memory.

As the chart above shows – calculating the equivalent DM price from Dresdner Bank's Euro Fix at the irrevocable exchange rate – gold has now beaten the spike of Jan. 1980 by some 16.8%.

  • Change in Euro gold price, Jan. '05 to date: +168%
  • Change in USD gold price, same period: +165%

The outlook? The finance industry's previous trick of creating synthetic XAU/USD positions for Euro investors has suddenly flipped over in 2010, with banks now advising and creating synthetic XAU/EUR positions for Dollar-investors instead.

  • Change in Euro gold, 2010-to-date: +13.5%
  • Change in Dollar gold, same period: +5.3%

Yes, those Eurozone funds sold on replicating gold's Dollar-price moves have missed out on the metal's much simpler (and cheaper) currency-hedge gains. But by keeping its rates stuck at 1.0%, the European Central Bank is inviting speculators to fund the new long-gold/short-Euro bet at very low cost, if not quite as cheaply as short Dollars, Yen or Sterling.

"We all share a destiny in common," said ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet at Thursday's press conference. But that common destiny was supposed to be the Deutsche Mark's famous stability, rather than Club-Med-style currency attack.

And in a world of near-zero rates everywhere, the real question is which major currency will be next to sit on the right-hand side of XAU – the wrong side of gold – in bank-analyst recommendations.

How best to Buy Gold today? Keep it simple, safe and low-cost by using BullionVault...

Adrian Ash

Adrian Ash, BullionVault Gold News

Adrian Ash is director of research at BullionVault, the world-leading physical gold, silver and platinum market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and he has now been researching and writing daily analysis of precious metals and the wider financial markets for over 20 years. A frequent guest on BBC radio and television, Adrian is regularly quoted by the Financial Times, MarketWatch and many other respected news outlets, and his views from inside the bullion market have been sought by the Economist magazine, CNBC, Bloomberg, Germany's Handelsblatt and FAZ, plus Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore.

See the full archive of Adrian Ash articles on GoldNews.

Please Note: All articles published here are to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it. Please review our Terms & Conditions for accessing Gold News.

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