Gold Price
Gold has been used throughout history as money and has been a relative standard for currency equivalents specific to economic regions or countries, until recent times. Many European countries implemented gold standards in the latter part of the 19th century until these were temporarily suspended in the financial crises involving World War I. After World War II, the Bretton Woods system pegged the United States dollar to gold at a rate of US$35 per troy ounce. The system existed until the 1971 Nixon Shock, when the US unilaterally suspended the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold and made the transition to a fiat currency system. The last currency to be divorced from gold was the Swiss Franc in 2000.
Since 1919 the most common benchmark for the price of gold has been the London gold fixing, a twice-daily telephone meeting of representatives from five bullion-trading firms of the London bullion market. Furthermore, gold is traded continuously throughout the world based on the intra-day spot price, derived from over-the-counter gold-trading markets around the world (code "XAU"). The following table sets forth the gold price versus various assets and key statistics on the basis of data taken with the frequency of five years:
| Year | Gold USD/ozt | DJIA USD | World GDP USD tn |
US Debt USD bn | Trade Weighted US dollar Index | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 37 | 839 | 3.3 | 370 | ||
| 1975 | 140 | 852 | 6.4 | 533 | 33.0 | |
| 1980 | 590 | 964 | 11.8 | 908 | 35.7 | |
| 1985 | 327 | 1,547 | 13.0 | 1,823 | 68.2 | |
| 1990 | 391 | 2,634 | 22.2 | 3,233 | 73.2 | |
| 1995 | 387 | 5,117 | 29.8 | 4,974 | 90.3 | |
| 2000 | 273 | 10,787 | 31.9 | 5,662 | 118.6 | |
| 2005 | 513 | 10,718 | 45.1 | 8,170 | 111.6 | |
| 2010 | 1,410 | 11,578 | 63.2 | 14,025 | 99.9 | |
| 1970 to 2010 net change, % | ||||||
| 3,792 | 1,280 | ... | 3,691 | ... | ||
| 1975 (post US off gold standard) to 2010 net change, % | ||||||
| 929 | 1,259 | ... | 2,531 | ... | ||
On August 22, 2011 gold reached a new record high of $1908.00 at the London Gold Fixing. On 13 June 2012, Gold prices breached Rs 30,000 mark due to global financial uncertainty and touched the record high of Rs 30420 per 10 gms. On 19 June 2012, gold zoomed further to Rs. 30,750 per 10 gm in the New Delhi,breaking its previous record of all time high.
Read more about this topic: Gold As An Investment
Famous quotes containing the words gold and/or price:
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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