In overnight trading at about 8:30PM EST, Gold hit and passed US$500 per ounce. At the time of this post, gold was at US$501.30 and moving up.

Platinum surpasses US$1000/ounce for a short period of time today, the first time since 1980. Gold hit an high asking price of US$499.70 around the same time. Expect platinum to continue to rise as governments enforce stricter anti-pollution measures for vehicles, and platinum is a crucial part of catalytic converters. Gold closed on the NY market today at US$498.30, marking a 10% increase from 1 year ago.

Russia’s Central Bank Chairman announced a few hours ago that they plan on increasing their gold reserves slowly over a few years rather than over a few months as President Putin had suggested. Pressure from other governments, maybe?

The Fisch Fake Coin Detector is no more. The creator is selling what is left of these amazing and simple counterfeit detector scales and then will (probably) no longer make them. This is sad news, but it means you can be one of the last to get your counterfeit detector before they’re gone forever. The Fisch is the easiest way to find fake or clipped coins before you buy them.

Earlier today I mentioned trying to find a decent replacement to the Gold-Oil ratio. I took this ratio and divided it into the M3 Money Supply figure to come up with a Money/Gold-Oil ratio. I’m not sure if this really offers much insight, but my numbers came up as the following:

1973-1980: 92.79 average; 1981-1990: 161.22 average; 1991-2000: 263.88 average; 2001-NOW : 743.17 average; Oct 2005 : 1193.00 LINK TO MY DATA

This number is basically how many dollars there are divided by (the price of gold divided by the price of oil). As you can see, the ratio grew slowly (as did the dollar supply) up until about 1999. From 2000 to the present, the money supply exploded but the price of gold and oil did not keep up. I’m going to look at another ratio of M3/(gold*oil) which might show a different ratio.

For the fashion-conscious, Newsday recommends adding the color of gold to your wardrobe. I think I’ll pass.