Gold Taps New High

All the stars aligned for gold Wednesday as the precious metal hit an new all-time high of $1579.70 per ounce.

After consolidating from May highs, gold has staged an impressive stealth rally since the beginning of July as QE2 ended and speculation about QE3 started.

Tuesday, gold bugs got what they were looking for with the minutes from the June 21-22 FOMC meeting showing some Fed officials are already considering additional monetary easing. If economic growth remains too slow and fails to reduce unemployment, and inflation remains subdued, the officials believe "it would be appropriate to provide additional monetary policy accommodation."

After hitting new all-time highs at around 7:30AM ET, gold backed off and is now up $11.30 to $1573.60.

Investors have been getting exposure to gold though various vehicles. Here are some of the most popular.

ETFs like SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD), iShares COMEX Gold Trust (NYSE: IAU), and ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares (NYSE: SGOL). Or the miners like Goldcorp (NYSE: GG), Newmont Mining (NYSE: NEM), Kinross Gold (NYSE: KGC), Barrick Gold (NYSE: ABX), AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU). There are also the mining ETFs -Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDX), Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDXJ).