RE: Strategy10 Oct 2022 12:00
Unlike bitcoin, gold also has a track record of performing through several crises. Often when a market correction is at its height gold will be sold too, given it becomes one of the few liquid assets available to market traders which can be offloaded without taking too much of a financial hit.
You saw this pattern in the 2007/8 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. Though on both occasions gold fell less than the wider market and, once the initial indiscriminate selling was out of the way, the metal price then enjoyed a strong run.
The CEO of gold explorer Greatland Gold (GGP:AIM) Shaun Day comments: ‘I think we’ve seen gold over the last five years really return to being that store of value through global volatility, be that economic or geopolitical.’
Day adds: ‘With that combination of economic volatility amplified by geopolitical uncertainty, in particular the Russian war in Ukraine, but also the role that China plays in the world, it adds up to a more volatile universe that we live in, and I think those things should make you feel very confident about the sense of having gold as part of a diversified portfolio.’
He also highlights the return of inflation as being in gold’s favour. BullionVault’s Ash says if we see stagflation – where rising prices are accompanied by a slump in the economy – ‘this is probably the ideal environment for gold thanks to its relationship with real interest rates’.