Hold gold and buy miners

Gold is the only sane investment in an insane world, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But surprisingly, gold mining stocks haven't caught up yet. That means there are still some great bargains to be had - so here's what you should buy.

I interviewed two important people for you this week Anthony Bolton and Alistair Darling. Subscribers can read the words of the formerhere and those of the latter next week. But if you're a regular reader, you will know by now the kind of questions I ask everyone. Do they expect inflation or deflation? When will China implode? Are fund managers responsible for the outrageous levels of executive pay? What would they do if they got to be a benign dictator to the world for 50 years? And, of course, do they hold any gold?

Darling holds no gold. No surprise there. Bolton was a different matter. He's a pretty optimistic kind of a guy overall, but he still thinks that the average portfolio should be 10% invested in gold. He sees why it is the "anti currency" (the one that will hold its value if all others fall). He gets why it should be held as an insurance in times like this. And like us, he expects it to have a massive exponential move at some point that will take it to new highs way beyond its current levels.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.