Gold might look frothy – but it's not a bubble

Within the last few weeks, gold has made it onto Radio 4's Today programme and the front pages of The Sunday Times Money section. Even the notorious deflationist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who, until recently, championed government money printing in the form of quantitative easing, signed off a piece for The Telegraph last weekend with the words: "Of course gold can go higher". When gold starts getting that kind of exposure, it's often a sign of some kind of intermediate-term top. But a bubble? I'm not so sure. Let's take a look at some of history's greatest bubbles and see how gold's ten-year run ranks so far.