This is obviously critical to many investment decisons in...

This is obviously critical to many investment decisons in mining. The recent very large drop after a double top to below the confirmation point (around $1550) would generally indicate a continuing downtrend and time to get out of gold unless you want to trade on volatility.

However, maybe gold is a litle different because of its use as a real physical storage of wealth. Have a look at

http://hotcopper.com.au/post_threadview.asp?fid=279&tid=1986451&msgno=31890#31890

Talk and anecdotal evidence suggests there is not enough physical gold to satisfy all the gold paper around and that there are queues to redeem physical gold, which if true indicates the pog will climb again in the medium term.

In addition for Aus, until a couple of years ago the A$ pretty well tracked the pog and other mined commodities we produce. There are some commentators prognosticating that A$ will eventually come back to this (eg Gottliebsen) which, even if the pog continues to drop may ameliorate the pain for Aus producers (let's hope so).

So maybe it is not so gloomy and doomy as recent events suggest. Next week and subsequently will be interesting for TAM, other producers and the gold market!