
How does gold impact your portfolio?
Many investors today already diversify their portfolios across style, sectors and geographies. By including new asset classes that have low historical correlation to asset classes that are currently in their portfolio, investors can help further reduce portfolio volatility.
Gold has historically shown little to no correlation to major asset classes, including commodities. And while the price of gold is volatile, gold has historically displayed lower volatility than major asset classes over both long and short time periods. As a result, a small allocation to gold may help improve the risk/return trade-off of investment portfolios.
The following chart illustrates the historical effect of adding small amounts of gold to a diversified portfolio. As you can see, allocating 5% of the portfolio to gold improved the risk/return relationship of the portfolio primarily by reducing risk. You can see the effect of adding 10% or 20% as well.
Past performance does not guarantee future results. Standard Deviation: The Standard Deviation is the statistical measure of the degree to which an individual value in a probability distribution tends to vary from the mean of the distribution. It is widely applied in modern portfolio theory, where the past performance of securities is used to determine the range of possible future performance, and a probability is attached to each performance. Sources: LBMA, S&P, MSCI, Barclays Capital, BlackRock. Ten-year correlations based on monthly returns. Gold: London PM Fix; US Large Cap: S&P 500® Index; US Mid/Small Cap: S&P 600 Index; Developed International: MSCI EAFE Index; US Fixed Income: Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index.
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Video
Kayvan Malek on Gold
BlackRock's Kayvan Malek discusses what sets gold apart as an investment vehicle. (1 mins)
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Related Resources
- Insights into Investing in Gold Whitepaper: 12 pages
- iShares Gold Trust FAQ Brochure: 8 pages
- iShares Gold Trust Fact Sheet (IAU) Fact Sheet: 2 pages
