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Since Nixon ended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold (at $35/oz) in 1971, the price of gold in dollars has increased at about 8% a year. The S&P 500 ov
by ta_billlegrand 3y ago
Since Nixon ended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold (at $35/oz) in 1971, the price of gold in dollars has increased at about 8% a year. The S&P 500 over that time frame has returned a bit over 10% a year. If gold has been a sucker's bet, stocks have been barely less of one.
Of course, the correlation between gold prices and stock prices is quite low, so a blended portfolio (occasionally rebalanced) would have outperformed a 100% allocation to either with less volatility.
- ajross 3y agoYou're probably being downvoted unfairly because of the reference to the fiat currency conspiracism. But to treat your actual point: That's an extremely cherry-picked date. 1970 was the bottom a deep trough in gold prices. If you look just a few years in either direction, it was 50% higher. You would have had to aim your investment with shocking precision to even get close to stocks in terms of returns. If you look back to 1940, you'll see that gold has returned about 1.2% in real value, which is significantly less than bank interest. Gold has been losing money, on balance, in the power-war world. See: https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-... It's a volatile asset, so you can always play games with dates to make it look like a good thing. But it's not. It's a sucker's bet, and I stand by that. Buy a mutual fund.