Is Gold the Next Bubble?

By BRETT ARENDS
WSJ

It's been the amazing, runaway boom of the past decade. If you'd put your money into gold at the lows about 10 years ago, you'd have made a nearly 400% return. That's left pretty much everything else—stocks, China, let alone housing—in the dust.

But with gold now trading near record highs, the big $1,200-an-ounce question is obvious.

Niall Ferguson: Investing Amid Uncertainty Economic historian and author of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Niall Ferguson gives his predictions on gold prices, emerging markets and the Swiss franc.

Is the gold rush over?

Some smart people wonder. "The time to buy gold was in 1999, not 2010," Harvard professor Niall Ferguson tells The Wall Street Journal—though he added that momentum might still drive it higher. Others will tell you that "the smart money got out of gold months ago." But then people have been saying that for years.

(Original here.)