With the gold delivery a CAGR of 18 percent (compound annual growth rate) in the last three years, many investors wonder if they should transfer a large part of their portfolio to gold. If a ‘safe shelter’ can obtain a yield of 18 percent, why bother to invest in something else? Special fixed income assets such as government values or bonds that only give it 7-8 percent?
These ideas show to what extent the investors are influenced by the bias of the trial. Gold is a volatile asset that meets the best elimination times of great uncertainty and global agitation. Before making investment decisions, it is important to understand how gold behaves in normal times, when there is no crisis.
We perform a return return analysis on gold prices (in India, in terms of rupees) in the last 25 years and compare this with a golden background and a bond background (randomly chosen for a 25 -year record). Here are the conclusions.
More swings than bonds
Many Indians believe that gold prices move only in one sense, constantly up. This is simply not true. Gold is a volatile asset with strong bidirectional swings.
A gold gold analysis between March 2000 and March 2025 shows that gold averaged a year or 13.3 percent in this period. The golden background averaged 8.6 percent. The bond fund (which invests in highly qualified corporate bonds and golds) delivered 8.5 percent.
This shows that gold has a greater return potential. But an arithmetic average can hide extremes. Gold returned a gain of 65 percent in his best year, but suffered a loss or 15 percent in his year of sausages. The Golden Fund won 27 percent in its best year and lost 11 percent in its sausage year. The corporate bond fund contained 6 percent losses in its sausage year, while offering a gain of 23 percent in its best year.
These changes in annual yields are reflected in a high standard deviation for gold (the standard deviation measures the average average swing). While gold had a standard deviation or 14.4 percent in its annual performance such as 2000, the Bond Fund had a standard deviation of 3.7 percent and the golden background of 6.4 percent.
Therefore, if return volatility disturbs it, gold cannot be a great assignment in its portfolio. Links are a better adjustment.
More frequent losses
Many people think that gold investments are really “safe.” That is, capital can never be lost when investing in gold. The data show that gold frequently performs annual losses and sometimes even remains for five years.
Gold had years of loss of losses approximately 19 percent of the time between 2000 and 2025. The year of loss loss is much less frequent for bond funds, 1 percent of the time. The golden funds had years of 7 percent of loss of losses.
Gold can deliver losses for long periods of possession, about five years. As of 2000, there has not been a period of five years when the fault fund or the delivery of the bond fund a loss for investors. But gold delivered losses approximately 5 percent of the time for investors who kept it for five years. For example, between December 2012 and December 2017, gold investors have touched capital loss of 7 percent despite participation for five years.
Inflation can decrease
Most people invest to do better than inflation. Therefore, it is important to evaluate how often an asset exceeds inflation. Average long -term inflation of India is approximately 6 percent.
Bond funds pass this test better than gold. If the hero for five years at the same time, Gold delivered less than 6 percent returns approximately 17 percent of the time. But bond funds increase 6 percent only 1 percent of the time. The golden funds were less reliable than gold and delivered less than 6 percent of approximately 23 percent of the time.
But to be fair, if you are looking for high yields or 12 percent more, Bond or Scream funds have a substitute for pores for gold. About five years of horizons, Gold achieved 12 percent plus the return of good 59 percent of the time. But the bond funds never reached the 12 percent mark on five -year horizons and the golden funds did it approximately 5 percent of the time.
Carry
What this tells him is that gold is not an “safe” asset that guarantees capital protection. Nor is it an asset that delivers constant returns from year to year. Unlike bonds, all gold yields only come from the appreciation of the price. You may not deliver any performance for long periods, when there is no crisis. But when other assets such as shares or bonds are in danger, Gold offers great success and acts as a large portfolio shield.
It can be quite diffigent predict in advance when land demand events occur. This is the reason why the best strategy to invest in gold is to make a long -term SIP (systematic investment plan) in gold or ETF funds on long periods to average its purchase price. The allocation to gold cannot be more than 10-15 percent of its portfolio, given its inability to overcome inflation most of the time. Nor can it replace bonds that offer a 6-10 percent yield at all times to Indian investors.
Posted on April 12, 2025
