In an article posted on BullionVault.com Monday about the Dow/Gold Ratio, Adrian Ash, head of the research desk at BullionVault, supplies the insightful chart below, which shows how many ounces of gold you would need to buy one unit of Dow stocks.

He says dividing the Dow Jones Industrial Average by the price of gold gives you a rough idea of where the real value might lie. Gold was a raging sell when the Dow/Gold ratio touched 1.0 at the start of the 1980s, but by the end of the '90s the Dow/Gold ratio fell from its all-time top above 42.2 to just 12.6 in March of this year.

So which way will the ratio go now, he asks? The Fed is diligently trying to keep stock prices buoyant, but it's only adding to the "Case for Gold" as well.