Nearly 50% of Australians ‘Never Thought’ About Gold As An Investment — ABC
Bullion
Tue July 10 2018
As gold is searching for new
buyers amid a general lack of safe-haven interest on the market, Australia’s
ABC Bullion found out that almost 50% of the population never even thought
about investing in the yellow metal.
“We wanted to identify the major
barriers which are preventing Australians from holding gold in their
portfolios. What we learned was staggering: 45% of Australians never even
thought about investing in gold, and that’s not good for anybody,” ABC Bullion
said after conducting its ‘Australians Investing In Gold’ survey.
The survey was sent out randomly
to “general Australian population” and out of the 372 respondents, 44.7% said
they “never thought” about investing in the yellow metal, 12.6% said they
“don’t know how to invest” in gold, 7.1% replied that “there were not
investment yield”, 6.8% said that the precious metal is “too volatile,” 5.3%
noted that gold “seemed hard to buy and sell”, and the other 33.9% replied
“none of the above” as their reason for not investing.
The “real issue” behind 45% of
Australians ignoring gold is lack of knowledge about a key financial strategy
that utilizes the yellow metal — portfolio diversification, according to ABC
Bullion.
“The point is not that gold
should supplant housing or shares, but that gold should complement other
investments. It simply has too much to offer as an inflation hedge, safe-haven
investment and historical store of wealth to be sidelined in the investment conversation,”
the organization said.
Another reason why Australians
might be overlooking the traditional safe-haven asset is the surging property
market in Australia, which could be luring investors away from gold.
“[There was an] incredible rise
in the value of Australian property over the past twenty-five years, with many
Australians doing very well leveraging into residential property over this time
period,” ABC Bullion wrote. “Had the Australian property market had a crash
like the U.S. property market had, and if interest rates had been cut to zero
locally, like they have been in the U.S., Europe and Japan, then we would
expect gold demand to be higher in Australia.”
The bullion dealer also pointed
out that rising risk within the country’s housing market could potentially lead
to higher gold prices.
As an investment instrument, gold
has a lot of potential in Australia as the majority of the population does not
own the precious metal at the moment. Around 86% of those surveyed said they
don’t own physical gold in their investment portfolio.
“The results of our research
should serve as a wake-up call to investors. It’s so easy for any of us to be
drawn into the hype around various investment classes … But at the end of the
day, there is no substitute for comparing a broad range of asset classes and
diversifying your portfolio accordingly,” ABC Bullion said. “Gold has been
humanity’s trusted investment of choice for over six thousand years, because it
retains its value as currency despite political regime changes and new
technological innovations. During tumultuous times like these, any investor
ignoring that heritage does so at their own risk and peril.”a
Source: http://www.kitco.com/