Buying into a gold revival

Under the classical gold standard, bank notes were backed by gold and could be freely converted to gold at a fixed price. In 1973, the year that the US dollar came off the gold standard, the currency was converted to gold at US$35 per oz. The last major currency to come off the gold standard was the Swiss Franc, in 2000. Today no major currency is on the gold standard.

The Egyptians produced the first known currency exchange ratio which mandated the correct ratio of gold to silver: one piece of gold is equal to two and a half parts of silver. Today, the price of one gram of gold is equivalent to 70 grams of silver.

Interestingly, another 5,000 year old civilisation is reviving the use of gold. The Chinese have been buying gold in recent years and for good reason. On April 19, 2016 the Shanghai Gold Fix officially opened. The pricing mechanism is intended to be an eventual replacement for the London Gold Fix, the primary price-discovery mechanism for gold bullion today. Unlike the paper gold markets such as US Comex futures and gold ETFs, the Shanghai Gold Exchange is a real bullion market in that it delivers physical gold.

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