Don't be too quick to sell your gold

The price of gold has pulled back a little from its all-time highs. But the conditions that fuelled gold's bull run remain. And until politicians and bankers get a grip on things, investor demand for gold won’t go away.

There might be a little kernel of doubt slipping into your mind about gold by now. I've been telling readers to buy it for more than ten years now. That's worked very well indeed. If you'd piled in back in 2002, you are probably the only person in your street not fussed about whether inflation is two or three percentage points over the Bank of England's target.

But the last few weeks have sent goldbug heads spinning. First, the price went as they say in the City parabolic, hitting new high after new high and peaking at $1,917 an ounce. That led to a rash of articles about gold in the press and Twitter links to charts comparing movements in the gold price to those of the Nasdaq during the dotcom bubble, the Nikkei in the 1980s, and the Chinese stock market in 2007.

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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.