The Gold/Silver Ratio: Gold And Silver Going Higher

The price of gold and silver will both hit new highs in 2014. The price of gold goes north of $2,000, and silver will quickly go over $50. When it does, it will get a little crazy.  – Eric Sprott, Sprott Investment Management - SilverDoctors.com

A reader the other day was inquiring about the gold/silver ratio (GSR). The GSR is an interesting metric that converts the price of gold and silver into the number of ounces of silver it would take to buy one ounce of gold.  Over the entire course of history, that I know of, the GSR has been as low as 8, which was the fixed ratio used by the Roman Empire for exchanging gold and silver.

Interestingly – at least to me – if you look at the GSR over the last 350 years, it held steady at around 15 until the middle/late 1800′s.  At that point in time it rose steadily as the gold standard was slowly eroded by United States.  President Lincoln was actually the first President to disconnect gold and silver as  the Constitutionally mandated currency when he allowed someone to use Government-issued bonds to settle a debt obligation (the action was later upheld by the Supreme Court under President Grant).

At any rate, to cut to the chase, since the Federal Reserve was founded, the GSR has ranged from 15 to 100.   The low-end of the range usually correlates with bull market tops in gold/silver and vice versa with the high-end.

Currently the GSR is 60 and I believe the recent movement in the GSR is signalling the possibility of a big move ahead for gold and an even bigger move for silver. 

I don’t know if the next big move higher that I believe is coming will be the final stage of the precious metals bull market, but I do think that based on the extraordinary supply/demand fundamentals for gold that the next move will be big for gold and spectacular for silver.