Is Inflation Hedging a Reason to Save in Gold?

This digest article examines whether gold can hedge an investor’s inflation risk over the long term. Though many studies do find that a long-run equilibrium relationship exists between gold and inflation in various countries, these results may not be relevant for the outcomes that real investors would have experienced. This article examines the results of saving an ounce of gold a year for a U.S. dollar-based investor over 25 to 40 years, as someone saving for a pension would, over a 200-year period. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, in the majority of cases, saving in gold would not have compensated these investors for inflation when they came to draw down their funds at retirement. The paper concludes that there may be good reasons for an investor to hold gold, including portfolio diversification benefits and acting as a safe haven during major market crashes, but reliable inflation hedging properties does not appear to be one of them.