re: ****gold rooted****rivkinsjockstrap Rod.Sorry, don't attempt...

re: ****gold rooted****rivkinsjockstrap Rod.
Sorry, don't attempt to predict the future. Not in public, and not sober, anyway! In other words, you are asking the wrong guy. I get the feeling you will get an answer from another person on this forum who is more prepared to put their neck on the line. There seems to be a lot of them. For a start, I think a great number of other indicators have to be looked at in relation to gold, and not just the single chart you presented.

Also, I'm not sure whether you are asking about silver or gold. As we both know, silver has generally tracked the gold price, but if our investment in physical silver bullion is to come to anything, at some stage silver is going to have to detach itself from gold on the basis of the supply-demand equation frequently bandied about in silver discussions. In short, silver is going to have to cease to be a 'precious metal', and become a metal in demand ala the coppers, platinums etc etc we have seen over the past few years. For your silver shares, unfortunately I think you may have to hold them well into the next year to see if anything comes of the silver supply deficit. Which is to say you are either going to be holding gold with your silver shares, or bronze with your silver shares, but I don't think this year (note this is just an opinion, and not something I'm hanging my hat on). No one remembers the bronze medalist. But if its gold you win, you will be set for life, sort of like the Thorpedo, except you won't be into fashion as much. And I doubt you'll be on your own float in the 2008 mardi gras.
But back to your question about gold. The only future for gold, unlike silver, is as an alternate store of value to the US dollar. Just about all of the gold mined (think its about 48 000 tonnes) is above ground. I myself am of the opinion the US economy is perched above a precipice, driven there by massive and growing debt, high oil prices: investor sentiment in the US is turning ugly bit by bit. The US economy, and its dollar, are daily propositions at the moment, and decidedly bearish. Hopefully sentiment will change, and then picking share winners will become like shooting fish in a barrel, as it has been in the last few years.

But if the money comes out of the sharemarkets there, and if it comes it will come with a rush, given the intricate sophistication of computerised trading (the DJ aside, but you get my drift) and the massive power of hedge funds who all work under basically the same philosophy; if it comes, where is it to go to? A massive mattress? Actually, hold that thought. May be better returns in such a situation. Such a flashpoint would mean the US dollar would devalue rapidly, the only thing holding it up at the moment really is Asian bond buying in exchange for the US buying their consumer products. What happens if the Asians realise some of the debt owed to them may be defaulted? A US blowout would, in my opinion, be good for physical bullion, and initially bad for all shares, gold, silver or otherwise. In other words, whither the winds in the US sharemarkets blow, whither the price of gold shall blow opposite.