Barrick (NYSE:ABX) CEO Says No Gold Bubble Now

Barrick (NYSE:ABX) CEO was calming fears recently as gold has been going through a minor correction, which seems to always generate fears gold has entered a bubble phase, something Regent refutes.

He said at a recent conference that there is still a lot of room for gold prices to move up.

Being the largest producer of gold in the world is reason enough for Regent to say what he's saying, but it's not just marketing hype, he's correct.

He gave several elements that he would expect to happen if gold was in a bubble, probably the most important one what he identified as being "overowned."

Regent said, “A bubble is when an asset is overowned. And I don’t think you can suggest that gold is overowned.”

“If you take the value of the gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as a percentage of US money markets, the gold ETF [holding] is probably about one per cent.”

Another important gold bubble factor to look for in Regent's estimation is the volatility of the metal, which at this time he asserts isn't very much.

“When you look at bubbles, what is a bubble often characterised by? Well, it’s characterised by assets that have extreme volatility,” he added. “The volatility in gold right now is very modest."

Regent also cited comments made by World Bank president Robert Zoellick concerning the role of gold in relationship to global currencies, calling gold a reference point for paper money, or digits, if you prefer.

Fiat currencies are one of the major factors in the rise of the price of gold, although there are several other connected to the price movement as well.

Other macro concerns include the EU sovereign debt crisis, so-called quantitative easing, fate of the U.S. dollar, the economy, interest rates, the balance of trade, among others.

All of these contribute to the overall support under gold prices, and as you can see from all of them, they're not going to go away any time soon.

So with these fundamentals in place, a bubble isn't going to happen, no matter how far the price of gold goes; at least for a couple of years, and maybe longer.

The most obvious identifier will probably be when the man on the street starts to plow money into gold at extremely high prices, but not understanding why he's doing it. Then it may be time to run, but that's not in the cards in the near future.

Barrick says they're on target to produce from a range of 7.6 million to 7.85 million ounces of gold over the next year. In about five years expectations are production will reach about 9 million ounces annually by the mining giant.

Barrick Gold closed Friday at $53.30, down $0.08,or 0.15 percent.