INVESTING Analysts predict gold will glitter

The metal is rising in price as the dollar diminishes in value.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Vince Grimaldi remembers Jan. 21, 1980, the final day of the last big gold bubble.
"It was like a Broadway opening," said Grimaldi, a salesman at the Valley Gold & amp; Silver Exchange in San Jose. "People were lined up outside the building and around the corner. People were taking $1,000, $2,000 out of their bank accounts and running in to get some gold coins, silver, whatever. They'd buy whatever we had on hand."
In that uncertain environment of inflation and high interest rates, investors abandoned stocks and bonds and turned to gold as it rose to a record $850 an ounce.
The current environment would seem to be the exact opposite, except for one item: Gold prices have risen sharply this past year.
"It's a trend in motion," said Robert Mish, president of Mish International Monetary in Menlo Park, Calif. "It will make new highs until the reasons why the dollar is falling and gold is rising cease to be."
Predictions
Many investors have heard predictions of an imminent bull market in gold for the past two decades from a devoted core of "gold bugs," even though the price of gold sank sharply and languished during the stock bubble at the end of the 1990s.
The difference now is that some of the most astute international financial managers are turning to gold, as well as other currencies and commodities, as top investments while inflation picks up and the dollar deteriorates in value.
Marc Faber, author of "Tomorrow's Gold" and editor of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, foresees a bull market for many commodities. His prediction: Gold could hit $1,000 an ounce.
Gold recently has been trading at just over more than $400 an ounce, up about $40 from the start of the year.
His logic is simple: Of all the currencies, gold is the only one whose supply is relatively fixed. Many central banks, especially the Federal Reserve Board in the United States, have fought the post-bubble threat of deflation by printing paper money. One broad measurement of the supply of dollars is up 16 percent in the past two years.
The market for paper money is becoming glutted, and by the laws of supply and demand, its price should decline compared to the more fixed supply of gold, he said.
"Gold is a currency, and it's an alternative to the dollar," said John Mauldin, president of Millennium Wave investments and author of a widely followed newsletter.
Additional factors
Other basic economic forces are favoring gold as well. It is rising in price, not only as a by-product of the Fed's fight against deflation by printing money, but as the result of the record twin deficits in trade and the federal government's budget.
"All the currencies are being diluted and will fall against commodities," Mish said. "The dollar will just fall faster."
Gold prices are also rising because demand is expanding for gold jewelry. Last year, China liberalized its laws on gold ownership. It eliminated a tax on owning gold and opened the Shanghai Gold Exchange, allowing its citizens to trade in gold more freely.
Elsewhere, gold is more than just an investment but is also used for gifts given at births, birthdays and weddings. Display cases at Bhindi's Jewellers in Fremont, Calif., show a beautiful array of rings, bangles and necklaces that his customers, largely Indian, buy for formal occasions.
"When a baby is born, it is traditional in India to give gold as a present," said Vinod Rai, Bhindi's manager. "It's an investment that keeps multiplying. If you buy clothes or a $100 bottle of wine, you use it and it's gone."
In India, the goddess of wealth, LaxmiJi, is highly respected. "Anything that you respect will multiply," Rai said.
What's available
In the United States, investors can buy gold coins such as the American Eagle, the Canadian Maple Leaf or the South African Krugerrand. They can also buy stock in leading gold-mining companies such as Newmont Mining (up 52 percent this year), South Africa's Anglogold (up 44.5 percent this year) and Canada's Barrick Gold (up 37.7 percent this year). Or they can buy mutual funds that focus on gold and other precious metals.
Frank Holmes, chief investment officer of U.S. Global Investors, thinks an investor should keep 10 percent of a portfolio in gold funds or coins to diversify against financial risk. As the price of gold changes, an investor should buy or sell to keep the same percentage in the portfolio.
More simply, he thinks investors should buy one gold coin a year. At retirement, no matter what the value of other assets are, a collection of gold coins will stand as a form of insurance.
"You don't buy insurance expecting to use it," he said.