On Twitter: Juan Carlos Artigas discusses measuring gold’s performance

On Twitter: Juan Carlos Artigas discusses measuring gold’s performance, in response to an earlier tweet: https://bit.ly/2ZgMnCE

@BrianFeroldi @efmacpherson @JReade_WGC agreed, tons of interesting stuff – understandably common but inaccurate way to measure/compare gold's performance, most of which we cover in 'The relevance of gold as a strategic asset': https://bit.ly/2W2T6ha

1) As per @efmacpherson, gold and the dollar were pegged till 1971; need to disentangle that effect to go that far back; seen from the currency lens, gold has considerably outperformed fiat money

2) gold has no yield b/c it has no credit risk; you can create gold-backed bonds to get yield if that’s what you are looking for; long-term returns for gold respond to consumer demand, investment demand and scarcity – since 1971 avg annual returns have been ~10% not unlike stocks

3) there’s a survivorship bias on stock indices so in practice such long comparison is interesting but not truly representative of actual observed returns over such long time periods. Here’s a note by Vangard on the subject: https://t.co/zpdyy78R91

4) gold, unlike commodities, has a dual nature which completely makes it stand apart; it has consistently outperformed the commodity complex for more than 2 decades with significantly less vol that most individual commodities. See more on 'Gold: the most effective commodity investment': https://t.co/zEp32YEhr7