> If you don't cherry-pick the year, the gold price right now is looking good compared to the past.
Then there's the near-decade drought between 2011 and 2019, and the multi-year drought between 2021 and 2024.
Meanwhile, if instead of having cash tied up in gold one had invested in an index fund (total market or even S&P 500), it'd be getting both price appreciation and dividends. Even the so-called S&P 500 lost decade of the 2000s did pretty well if you had some bonds and rebalanced (or, as a US resident, were internationally diversified):
The only time in recent history that gold seems to have been a useful 'investment' was a few years in the late 1970s and between 2000 and 2011. Over the course of decades it seems to have been a money hole.
> But it still might do better than, say, the Zimbabwe dollar, the Continental, or even the ruble over the past decade.
Compared to a diversified portfolio or even bonds (especially TIPS in the US), gold would have been a disaster.
Your original claim was "retain value". I think that was good wording - gold isn't a "make money" asset; it's a "don't lose it all" asset.
Comparing its investment performance to TIPS is therefore moving the goalposts from "retains value" to "grows fast". (Or am I taking the words in your first post as being more precise than they were intended?)
Then there's the near-decade drought between 2011 and 2019, and the multi-year drought between 2021 and 2024.
Meanwhile, if instead of having cash tied up in gold one had invested in an index fund (total market or even S&P 500), it'd be getting both price appreciation and dividends. Even the so-called S&P 500 lost decade of the 2000s did pretty well if you had some bonds and rebalanced (or, as a US resident, were internationally diversified):
* http://archive.is/https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2010...
The only time in recent history that gold seems to have been a useful 'investment' was a few years in the late 1970s and between 2000 and 2011. Over the course of decades it seems to have been a money hole.
> But it still might do better than, say, the Zimbabwe dollar, the Continental, or even the ruble over the past decade.
Compared to a diversified portfolio or even bonds (especially TIPS in the US), gold would have been a disaster.