What's the point of gold?

Gold doesn't give you any income, isn't much of a hedge against inflation and its purchasing power is much the same as it was 2,500 years ago. It has been written off many times before, but still people buy it. Adrian Ash explains why.

"The twilight of gold appeared to have arrived," wrote Niall Ferguson now a Harvard professor, then an Oxford scholar of the metal's 20-year bear market at the end of the last century.

"Gold has a future of course," he added, "but mainly as jewellery." And it's a common enough long-term view, repeated every so often by economists, historians, columnists and analysts.

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Adrian has written all things gold related from if it’s worth buying, what the real price of gold should be and what’s the point of gold for MoneyWeek. He has also written for other leading money titles on his gold expertise including Business Insider, Forbes, City A.M, Yahoo Finance and What Investment Magazine. Now Adrian is head of the research desk at BullionVault, a physical market for gold and silver for private investors online.