Saturday 12 May 2012

The Pros Of Investing In Gold

By Chris Scarborough


Everyone knows about gold. Rare, beautiful, and unique. Treasured as a store of value for thousands of years, it is an important and secure asset. Besides maintaining its long term value, it doesn't depend on a 'promise to pay' nor is it directly affected by economic policies of individual countries.

Gold is completely free of credit risk but it does bare a market risk and it has been a secure refuge in unsettled times. Wise investors are attracted to its 'safe haven' attributes. Gold has proved itself to be an effective way to manage wealth.

For at least 200 years the price of gold has kept pace with inflation. There's another reason to invest in gold and that's having consistent delivery within a portfolio of assets. Independently moving of other investments and key economic indicators is the performance of gold. An overall risk can be reduced by even a small weighting of gold in an investment portfolio.

In traditional financial assets like stocks and bonds are where most investment portfolios are primarily invested. The reason for holding diverse investments is to protect the portfolio against fluctuations in the value of any single asset class.

Portfolios that contain gold are generally more robust and better able to cope with market uncertainties than those that don't. Introducing an entirely different class of asset is adding gold to a portfolio.

Gold is unusual because it is both a commodity and a monetary asset. Its performance tends to move independently of other investments and key economic indicators which makes it an effective diversifier.

Studies have shown that traditional diversifiers (such as bonds and alternative assets) often fail during times of market stress or instability. Proven to significantly improve the consistency of portfolio performance during unstable and stable financial periods is a small allocation of gold.

Gold improves the stability and predictability of returns. Because the gold price is not driven by the same factors that drive the performance of other assets, it is not correlated with other assets. Gold is also significantly less volatile than practically all equity indices.

In terms of real goods and services that it can buy, the value of gold has remained remarkably stable. In contrast, the purchasing power of many currencies has generally declined.

Traditionally, access to the gold market has been through: investment in physical gold, usually as gold coins or small bars,or, for larger quantities, by way of the over the counter market; gold futures and options; gold mining equities, often packaged in gold-oriented mutual funds.




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