Shailendra Kakani 
 
It was yet another positive week for gold and silver. Both the precious metals climbed during the week, not very spectacularly, but steadily and stealthily. As gold was quoted above $840.60, silver also climbed during the week to touch a high of $14.90 an ounce.

Looking back at 2007, one can only gasp with wonder. What an year it was! Wheat jumped to all time high, Soybean did the same and so did platinum and a host of other commodities. Nickel crawled up all the way from $25,000 to $52,000 a tonne. Though crude oil did not do as well as nickel or wheat, the impact it left with its rise to within a whisper of $100 a barrel, is going to be felt for a long time to come.

If all these commodities were rising, how could gold be behind? The metal also climbed relentlessly throughout the year and added more than $200 (as of December 30.) - equal to an yearly gain of about 32%. What was really upsetting was to see silver failing to shine up as much as gold. While past few years has seen the white metal easily score over its more popular cousin, this time gold stole the show and left silver far behind. Silver gained only 15% in 2007 on a year-to-year basis.

Gold consolidated throughout the first half of the year. Having begun the journey at a comfortable $630-plus level, the yellow metal quickly slipped to $603 on just the fourth trading session of the year, when the Red Kite fiasco took the bottom of the copper prices. However, from there on it was a long series of minor ups and downs in $650-700 range, which lasted till August 15.

India’s Independence Day also propelled gold to a new platform and the metal was not seen below $650 again. Quickly the $700 mark was also became a history and soon followed the $750 level. Gold cleared all of these vital benchmarks and raced past one price resistance after another. And during the first week of November; the metal was seen galloping ahead towards a new record. The metal was only 0.5% short of its all-time high, previously seen 27 years back. The metal touched a high of $847 and thus routed the opinions of many diehard gold bears that the yellow metal would take few more years to leap past the $800 hurdle. Later, though the metal fell below the $770 level few times, it, however, managed to climb back to the $800 territory in no time.

Gold’s hip-hops in 2007 has only proved that the metal can go high, very high, from here. This is also being by the slew of positive predictions are pouring in from all quarters also corroborates this notion. Most of the commentators are bullish on the yellow metal and feel $800 would be the average price for the coming year. (The average price for 2007 was slightly less than $700, also an acyll-time high for average price.) No doubt, optimistic observers such as James Turk of GoldMoney quote numbers as high as $1100.

I see the metal at a high of $1000 with the average coming around $850 an ounce. Goes without saying, it is time to make purchases. 

Source : DNAIndia