Since Nixon took us off the gold standard there's no "supposed to be" figure, and in the last 35 years it has ranged from a low of under 20X from late Dec '79 thru about mid-Mar '80 (when silver ran up to its historical high vis a vis the Hunt Bros), to a high of just over 100X in the latter half of Feb '91. In May/Jun '03 it peaked just over 80X, the last few years it's oscillated in the 50X - 60X range regularly dipping into the high 40X's, and most recently, in 2007, spent pretty much all year between 48X - 57X.