Gold: Hedging For What Exactly?

After looking dull for years, gold is finally sparkling again. With the market in convulsions and Fed Chair Janet Yellen broaching the possibility of negative interest rates, the yellow metal is up about 17% in 2016.

Hey, I get it. People are scared. And justifiably so. Frankly, I’m a little scared about where all of this is going. But before you run out and fill up the truck of your car with precious metals (and perhaps canned goods and ammo) let’s look at gold with a cold, analytical eye. Gold could go a little higher from here. It certainly has momentum at the moment. But if you’re looking for a true crisis hedge, gold isn’t it.

Photo credit: Bullion Vault

Gold is less of an investment and more of an emotional ideology. Investors, and male investors in particular, have an odd way of developing feelings for the assets they buy. Just as sailors have for centuries given their ships a woman’s name, many men get possessive about their stocks. If you insult it, you might as well be insulting his wife or mother. But with gold, the attachment goes even deeper. Being a “gold bug” is not just a matter of passionately believing in the investment merits of gold. It is an identity and one that exhibits many of the characteristics of a radical political movement or even a religious cult. (There is a fundamental belief:Gold is the “one true store of value” or the “one true currency” and all imposters are heretical.)

Don’t be that guy. No one wants to be that guy. He’s a buzzkill at parties and way too intense.

But I digress.

Let’s strip away all ideology and try to look at gold fairly on its own merits. I would argue that the “barbarous relic” does indeed have its uses but that it’s still the wrong hedging assets to own in this market. Let’s break down the arguments in favor of gold:

#1. Gold is an inflation hedge. Ok, I don’t necessarily argue with this point. Over the years, gold has indeed proven to be a decent inflation hedge. Now, I might argue that real estate is a superior inflation hedge and also has the additional benefit of paying current cash flow in the form of rental income. But I’ll go ahead and cede this point to the gold bugs.