The gold to silver ration indicates not just how much silver you need, to buy the same weight in gold, there are also ways to benefit from it.
Basis reasons for high ration
A high ration means that gold is over priced, for which there are two consistent reasons: Inflation and investors perceiving risk.
Inflation
This is something which started decades ago and has not stopped since. in old times there really was more gold, at least in people`s mind, needed to pay for the exact same items; local rulers had reduced the net amount of gold, and or silver, in their coins to make their own debts more payable. So it makes sense for inflation to increase the gold price. As gold still is pretty close to money.
Risks
Because gold is considered money, but also listed on pretty much every single exchange, it is usually bought when traders want to reduce their risk. Given the large volume of money flowing in, prices will go up. It is not just traders increasing their position, most countries have sizeable reserves which they also increase as deemed necessary.
Both high inflation and high risk can therefor increase the ration. Depending on the type of risk, it can also cause inflation: Some risks reduce spending for fear of losses and some increase general spending or shift it towards a specific kind of mitigation. The latter can drive up prices further as demand for specific items increase, far beyond what is normal.
Portfolio
Having both gold and silver as fixed items in you portfolio allows for a double profit possibility: You can sell the overpriced one and buy the cheap one. A high ration means that gold is overvalued, as you need a lot of silver to buy the hallowed metal, so you can sell gold and maybe buy silver as the silver price is likely to go up, or at minimum the gold price could go down.
You can also simply ignore the ration or chose to see it as a regular price increase, where you simply do not buy that asset until its percentage of your portfolio value suggests otherwise.
Low ration
The main situations in which the silver price compared to the gold price would be sufficient for a low ration, would be high demand for silver or a abundance of gold hitting the market. In case of a high silver price, this would be the moment to sell. Where a genuinely low gold price is just an invitation to buy some more.
