Is Dirham better than Dinar?

Alhamdulillah, all praise be upon God.
This time i have the opportunity to present a paper entitled THE PERFORMANCE OF COMMODITY MONIES IN HEDGING FLUCTUATED PRICES: IS DIRHAM BETTER THAN DINAR? at APMC (Asia PAcific MArketing Conference)UNIMAS, Sarawak on this coming December. The paper has been refereed and accepted in the proceedings with minor correction. Thanks to the Director of UiTM for allowing me to go there tough with the restricted budget. Actually, this research was stimulated by the spirit of inquiries on how both precious could be differed in hedging prices. It also been conducted due to the questions arouse among friends that silver is become much better than gold. This probably because of a lesser manipulating prices of silver in the market.

This paper also is a continuation of the series of paper related gold dinar and silver dirham that I've previously been presented in various conferences such as AGMBE (Cairo, Egypt), IBBC (UMS, Sabah), ERC 2008 (Kota Bharu, Kelantan) and INCOMAR (Melaka). This research is not going to be a measurement of how is better than the other in term of the physical features and values, but it's more to the suitability in using them in trade. However, both of them has proven to score the no.1 and 2 in any trade engaged.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

The fluctuation in price has become a very serious problem for people. The price of necessity goods in market seems to extremely fluctuate from time to time. Wild fluctuations in price could have disastrous consequences for the economy. This situation may lead into financial distress for people, thereby bringing about numerous socio-economic problems such as unemployment, poverty, increasing disparity in income distribution and so forth. Previous researches had shown that the coinage system can make the whole economic system sustainable rather than fiat money system. Of course the reason for that is the Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham are capable of reducing the fluctuation in goods price, thus it can reduce the inflation and deflation. Despite the fact that the both gold dinar and silver dirham are in a same kind, but they are in a different weight age, hence each of them would bring different result in case of stabilizing or hedging the price fluctuation. The question may arise here is which one of these metal can be a better tool to stabilize or hedge the price fluctuation. As a response to this matter, an empirical study would be carried out to find the answer. Therefore, this study is purposely compared the performance of gold dinar and silver dirham in hedging the price fluctuation, and subsequently to identify which one of these commodity monies could be a better hedging tool.

Silver investment will outshine gold?

Silver may not be as hot as gold as far as global investments are concerned. But silver continues to grip the investment sentiments of bullion traders and dealers across the world.

According to a new report from Citigroup, silver will outperform and outshine gold.

The global bank said on Thursday that investment flows into gold are moderating while the outlook for silver is improving.

The ratio fo gold-to-silver prices should return to its historical norm between 55 and 60 from the current 69, it said.

Citigroup upgraded Fresnillo and Peter Hambro Mining to buy from hold, downgraded Randgold Resources to hold from buy and upgraded Hochschild Mining to hold from sell on reduced balance sheet concerns and the silver outlook.

Silver has outperformed gold so far this year. While the precious metal remains 35 per cent below its March 2008 high of $21.44 per ounce, its up 24 per cent compared to only 5.3 perc ent for gold. So far this month, the spot price of silver has risen 14 per cent.

On February 24th 2009, the aggregate trading in silver futures reached a high of over 81,900 contracts.

Over the medium to long-term the silver market is forecasted to remain robust. According to the Silver Institute’s World Silver Survey 2009, “Healthy investor interest in physical silver is expected to continue in the coming months, driven by continuing economic woes and uncertainty over the health of the financial services industry.”