One of the things that is always interesting about financial markets is the role that hyperbole plays in people’s decision making. For example, my LinkedIn page is for some reason littered with people who are obsessed with gold and this is a topic I have touched on before. For many investors, their decisions are based upon the victory of hope over common sense. And for many, this drifts into the being the victory of insane conspiracy theories over reality.
With this in mind, I thought it was time to look at the current YTD league table of commodities and see how gold was faring versus other commodities.
Despite its persistent superstar status gold has been a laggard YTD and this poor performance persists if we look back a full year with gold being up roughly 2.6%. If you had invested $10,000 in gold via GLD at the start of the pandemic it would now be worth about $11,908, conversely the same $10,000 invested in the NASDAQ 100 via QQQ would be worth around $20,000.
