Volatility in bond and equity markets and the decline of the US dollar over the past few years has encouraged investors to seek alternative global stores of value. More importantly, independent of movements in the US currency, demand from investors has been spurred by expected pressure on prices from tight supply and rising demand.
While we expect the gold price to benefit from improving fundamentals, if the price declined, gold shares would probably fall. Major production difficulties at one of the portfolio's gold companies could also cause a fall in share price.However, supply of mined gold has been flat for the past few years and we anticipate that this will continue as no major discoveries have been made in recent years. At the same time, demand from emerging markets has recently removed restrictions on its citizens owning gold, is rising. Gold's lack of correlation with other financial assets has also driven up investment flows.Finally, as an asset with inherent value, gold may appeal to investors concerned about uncertainty such as the risk of inflation, instability caused by high oil prices, global economic imbalances and geopolitical uncertainty.