The relationship between gold and oil prices has long been examined and there are many theories about it. Let's take a look at the recent relative performance of these two key bellwether commodities and see if any trend changes are emerging. We will use USO as a proxy for oil. USO is the U.S. Oil Fund ETF, which seeks to reflect the spot price of West Texas light sweet crude oil. For gold, we will use GLD, which is the SPDR Gold Shares ETF that emulates thte gold bullion price.

Oil topped out last July around $150/barrel. That marked a key turning point in the relative performance of these two commodities. As you can see in the following graph, the USO (in green) has lost a huge amount of value in that time, while the GLD (in red) has been basically flat and is certainly an outperforming versus the USO.

USO vs GLD Performance Chart


Gold began its recent rally in November of last year, right around when the stock market hit a severe panic bottom. As you can see in the following chart, the GLD has had strong performance since November 12, 2008, while the USO has continued to sell off.

USO vs GLD Performance Chart


Now we come to the most recent apparent trend shift. Since mid-February, the USO has been gaining ground, while the GLD is slightly down.

USO vs GLD Performance Chart


Is this new outperformance by Oil relative to Gold sustainable and the beginning of a new trend? While I personally have favored gold over oil for some time, the "charts tell the tale." And this began in mid-February, almost a month before the stock market began to rally from its most recent bottom. Perhaps this oil/gold performance was telling us early that economic circumstances may not become as dire as many thought. Or is this just a short-term blip, and gold will resume its upward rise that many had forecasted (and speculated on)? I would lean to the first explanation, that oil will outperform gold in the short term.

Price Headley is the founder and chief analyst of BigTrends.com.