The gold crusher price

The gold price briefly scaled $1,300 an ounce on Thursday on news India's central bank had eased some curbs on imports of the precious metal in place for more than a year. On the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold futures for June delivery in afternoon trade exchanged hands for $1,295.20 an ounce, up $7.10 from Thursday's trading session but down from earlier highs of $1,304. The third major change is the astounding decoupling of gold equities from the gold price. The latter went from $250 per ounce ($250/oz) in 2001 to just over $1,900/oz in 2011. In turn, the gold equities rose, but nowhere near the percentage the gold price did. This decoupling has hurt gold producers tremendously. Last year, we saw about 900 tons of gold come out of the ETFs. We saw 400 tons of gold come out of the COMEX. Goldman Sachs predicted that gold was going to $900/oz. But at $1,250/oz, the Chinese and the Indians stuck their hands out and said they would take it all. Gold then stabilized at $1,250/oz. Gold was helped by news that the Reserve Bank of India is relaxing a rule that called for the mandatory re-export of 20% of all gold cargoes and allowing trading houses and certain banks to boost imports. Other measures imposed by India's finance ministry, fighting a deep current account deficit and a weak currency, including import duties that have risen tenfold and transaction taxes remain in place, but with the change of leadership in the country those could go too.