While gold has again surged on safe haven buying overnight (and is up since 20% since the financial and economic crisis deepened), there is increasing surprise that gold has not surged to its recent record highs especially as there are deepening shortages of retail bullion internationally and the gold holdings of gold ETFs continue to surge.

The election is just 4 weeks away and we are likely to see gold surge soon after. The fundamentals, particularly of supply and demand, are looking extremely good and prices are set to surge in the coming months.

There are likely to be huge daily and weekly up moves in the gold market and a price surge akin to that seen in the late 1970s. In the four years after the election of Jimmy Carter, gold surged by more than 700% (from near $100/oz to over $850/oz) and given the confluence of even more bullish factors in this election year, we are likely to see a similar price surge in the coming months.

Gold may not have surged as much as some had expected in recent weeks due to massive liquidation in other all markets because of leveraged losses and a flight to cash. This is particularly the case with hedge funds and other traders and speculators with short term horizons.

But gold increasingly resembles a submerged beach ball - a submerged beach ball can only be pushed only so far under water prior to leaping out of the water and this is what will happen to gold prices in the coming weeks when the extremely bullish supply/demand fundamentals eventually kick in.

Premiums continue to surge on a daily basis on bullion coins and bars making the COMEX price less relevant all the time. There is the unprecedented situation whereby some large bullion dealers in the UK, Europe and the US have been cleared out of absolutely all of their bullion stocks of small coins and bars and also larger bars. Some wholesalers have also been cleared out and one of the largest wholesalers, who have limited supplies, are being forced to ration supply of coins and bars to their favoured customers.

We have had a manic week with staff drafted in from other divisions and working late into the evenings to clear the backlog of orders. We had the same volume of sales in the last week that we did in all of September which was a record month. Luckily we have been able to source some of our bullion requirements in mainland Europe but things are becoming increasingly tight there as well.