GOLD IS SOARING, YOU JUST DON'T REALIZE IT

We're devoting an entire week to showing you some amazing gold charts...

You might have watched gold fall from a high around $1,000 to below $725 and wondered what the heck was going on. Gold is known as a "crisis hedge"... an asset that soars when stocks, bonds, and the economy are performing terribly. The confusing thing is, investors have had a lifetime of crisis thrown their way in 2008, but gold has actually declined in price, right?

Actually, wrong. Yes, gold is down more than $170 an ounce from its summer highs. But that's when you measure it in U.S. dollars. Problem is, many folks around the world measure gold in different terms. Take the 300 million Europeans who use the euro as their currency.

Today's chart is the price of gold measured in euros. As you can see, gold is strong in the eyes of a European. Currencies tend to fall when their home economies weaken... when there aren't enough jobs or when folks get into too much debt. This is what's happening in Europe. The bull market in gold is alive and well... Brian Hunt's Market Notes.