Gold and Gold Mining Companies: Prices to Soar?

The term rally and bullish should continue for gold and gold futures over the next year or so, as it shouldn't have any problem breaking above the $900 an ounce barrier and soaring from there. Gold and silver mining producers or companies will also do great this year, not only from demand, but operations will cost much less as energy costs, which are a key cost for gold mining companies, will remain down this year, while gold prices continue to rise. That should produce a banner year for gold mining companies.

Much of what has held gold prices down during these tough economic times has been the forced liquidation and deleveraging major funds had to do in order to raise cash to cover their debt and expenses. That forced them to sell their positions in gold and other commodities in order to do that. That's the reason commodities struggled for some time, especially some of the precious metals. It's also the reason the US dollar was inflated far beyond its underlying fundamentals.

Now that it looks like gold is back as the haven of safety it always has been, we'll start to see it grow in a much larger way and respond as it should have been all along. The bulls are out of the pen and we'll see the yellow metal soar in 2009.

Many financial experts are turning into bulls now, as the reason they were so unsure is no one know how long big funds and investment firms would take to unwind their positions and be ready to go back to the commodity markets. It seems we have the answer now, and that answer is a bull market.

This of course means that quality gold companies will enjoy good times going forward, as they lead commodities and other precious metals forward. I don't think the grain markets will participate in the bull market, but most many metals will, including silver, which according to percentages could even outperform gold.

Another reason gold will do well for some time is the terrible ideas of the government to bailout every industry that runs their companies poorly. That will force them to keep printing money into oblivion, and that fiat money has a bad ring to it, as it'll definitely push inflation much higher because there's no one to buy U.S. debt to pay for these extraordinarly expensive initiatives.

That's good news for gold investors, as inflation will be another arrow in the quiver that will keep gold prices rising, and the gold rally extending.

Foreign governments will ease out of the untrustworthy U.S Treasury bonds, and so that will leave the U.S. and Federal Reserve with no option to keep the money printing presses humming, and they will.

That will also bring the value of the U.S. dollar down, and will make gold even more attractive.

Similar to the forced liquidation period of funds and investment firms, it'll be impossible to know how long the bull gold rally will last, but I think it'll be much longer than the forced liquidation period that helped the dollar remain strong, although the fundamentals were so off.

In this case, the trillions being promised and spent by the US government could keep gold as a solid investment for quite some time, as the U.S. dollar continues on its road to collapse.

As far as gold and silver mining companies, we'll see quite a number of them enjoy some of the best years they ever have, assuming they're already well run companies and positioned to take advantage of the haven of safety investors will be looking for in 2009.