``The price of gold has lost its ceiling,' said Carlos
Perez-Santalla, a gold trader at Hudson River Futures in New
York. Current prices are ``uncharted territory,' making it
difficult to see an end to the rally, Perez-Santalla said.
Gold for December delivery rose $26.20, or 9.2 percent, to
$310 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile
Exchange, with an estimated 170,000 contracts traded, a record.
It was the highest closing price since April 1998 and biggest one-
day gain since March 1980.
``We've bought some gold today,' said Nick Holland,
finance director at Gold Fields Ltd. in South Africa, the world's
second-biggest gold producer. Gold Fields bought ``to square off
some positions,' Holland said. Last week, the mining company
bought 100,000 ounces of gold, which was 12 percent of an auction
held by the Bank of England.
There also are more short positions -- both large and small
-- in off-market contracts in Europe and Asia that have still to
be covered, traders say.
``We just don't know how big the short positions are,' said
Kevin Norrish, minerals economist at Barclays Capital in London.
``Most of it is off-market. There must be massive short positions
out there.'
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