I just noticed something: your links are "lying with statistics". Everyone knows that if you want to "prove" that Gold is a good investment, just start your graphs at 1970s.

After all, Gold reached a glorious bubble of inflation-adjusted $2200+ / ounce in 1970s, and has fallen since then. (yes, even with today's inflated prices, Gold is no where near its inflation-adjusted high).

Lets take a more reasonable graph of Gold, ehh? Something longer term... and see what happens to your trend.

http://www.macrotrends.org/1437/gold-to-s-p-500-ratio

Gold's trend is downward compared to the majority of the market. Each valley is lower, and each peak is lower than the last (with exception of stagflation period in the 70s)

I am saying gold is better than commodities. I'm saying gold is not a "piss poor" investment, as it holds its buying power quite well. That is the function of a conservative investment.

The S&P 500 (which you can easily buy with Vanguard Mutual Funds or SPY ETFs) has approximately the same volatility index as Gold right now.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^VIX http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^GVZ

VIX for the S&P 500 is 13.58, while Gold VIX is 13.13. Stocks are both holding their buying power as well as Gold, and still offering better returns right now.

Gold's "stability" is a myth. It is no more stable than any other investment. Bonds offer a conservative, stable investment platform. Gold does not.

Gold is a commodity.

USD is a worse investment, and it seems like Real Estate is not much better than Gold :-p

Stocks as investment:

http://www.macrotrends.org/1378/dow-to-gold-ratio-100-year-h...

And of course, ycombinator. You know... the angel fund / venture capitalist firm that runs this website? We're all here because of investors investing into technology. They do so because they believe they can ultimately make money with technology investments. At least, more so than Gold, Real Estate, or even Stocks.

Indeed. And a 4% deflation rate would not seem to deflate their appetite for 100x gains.

we dont know why they are investing, or maybe you do. i wpyldnt be aurprised if they did invest in gold real estate and stocks simply for diversification

You know, comparing a commodity against a currency isn't very sensible. I don't know many (sensible) people who say "I'm just going to keep a load of dollar bills under my bed" when it comes to investing (which is what your first link compares to gold).

There is really little difference between a commodity and a currency other than how the supply is constrained. It is perfectly sensible to compare them.

The price of gold is so ridiculously inflated right now that it's insane to invest in it. For people back in 2000, it was a great idea, but now the price is high. The most basic rule of investing is buy low, sell high. It sounds like a stupid catch phrase, but even people like Warren Buffet have said that it's true.

You might be able to make a little bit of money, but unless the global economy collapses entirely, I doubt we'll see another major increase. Gold actually has gone down in value before, so it could easily happen again again.

Why would you compare gold to one mediocre and one bad investment? It seems that few people here understand opportunity costs.