Gold is poised to do something peculiar

If you buy gold on a forward basis, you almost always pay a higher price than if you buy it for delivery today. That is called 'contango'. Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager Steve Ellis, who runs the $20 million RAB Gold Fund, thinks that something quite rare is about to happen. "My assessment of the market, including gold forward rates, suggests that gold could be about to go into 'backwardation' [which is where the spot price is higher than the forward price]," he says. "That means …