Unfortunately for us there was also quite a 'bubble' in base metal prices as speculators ran the price up higher than it could be sustained. No question it's been driven down too far and recovery will come but not to the highs we saw a year ago.

My personal feeling is we will not be seeing any rush to precious metals because you can't eat it or gain interest on it. There are a lot of bargains out there which will give both high rate of interest as well as capital gains competing with precious metals. In addition one has to consider risk of inflation caused by all the money pumped into the system. Inflaton will cause interest rates to rise sharply and investors will seek high interest returns instead of parking funds in precious metals.

Guess we'll have to wait and see. Can't see many rushing out to buy gold jewellery at the moment.