2600 years ago, the Anatolian Kingdom of Lydia minted the world’s first gold and silver coins. In doing so, the Lydian King Alyattes and his successor Croesus introduced the world’s first exchange rate: the gold-silver cross. Like any cross rate, the amount of silver that can be purchased with an ounce of gold is driven by both demand and supply-side factors, and the cross rate is anything other than stable. Sadly, we don’t have the time series of the gold-silver ratio dating back to ancient times, but we do have data going back to the launch of gold futures on December 31, 1974. Since the mid-1970s, one ounce of ... (full story)