From today's Gartman Letter...... (1-11)

"We are and we have been and we shall continue to be bullish of gold, but as has been the case, we are bullish of it in non-US dollar terms, for we wish to hedge out the dollar exposure that is incumbent in a long gold position in US dollar terms. We wish to see gold not as a dollar trade, but rather we wish to see gold as a reserve “currency” trade; that is we wish to see gold for its value as the “third” or “fourth” reserveable asset held by the world’s central banks, lagging behind the US dollar, the EUR, and the Yen… but gaining upon the latter rather swiftly. We still hold to the thesis that the Reserve Bank of India’s decision to buy 200+ tonnes of gold last autumn from the IMF was a “plate shift” beneath the tectonic structure of global reserves, and that that plate shift marks the path that other central banks shall take this year. We are not gold bugs here at TGL; we do not believe in the notion that gold is manipulated or that governments try to lie about such things. We think that those arguments require far too large an investment of “mental capital” for our purposes. We wish those who make those arguments well, but so long as gold continues to move higher on other news we needn’t join… nor shall we ever likely join… the conspiratorialists [Ed. Note: Billy Murphy, we like ya' anyway!].

That being said, gold is trading €795 as we write, having traded ever so briefly to and just barely about the psychologically charged €800 level earlier this morning. It is also trading firmly in British pounds Sterling terms, trading £717 as we write, up quite tidily from the £702 level we marked it here Friday morning. And of course it is trading higher in ¥ terms, at or near ¥106,500. We should note that the highest level to which gold in ¥ terms has traded in the past five years is ¥109,000 and it is moving rather swiftly toward that level as we write. Remember, gold was trading just below ¥100,000 only two weeks ago. To move from ¥106,500 to new highs shall not require much “energy” on either side of the equation. This is especially so in light of the weak Yen arguments put forth by the new Finance Minister, Mr. Kan, last week. Given his statements, in the future we shall focus more of our attention upon Gold denominated in Yen than we have in the past. It is only reasonable that we do."