And that will help you assess the risk-reward related to gold investing, we studied the previous 15-year value information (from thirty first March 2010 to thirty first March 2025) of gold and in addition in contrast it with equities, which is commonly thought of to be one of many riskiest asset lessons. Right here’s what we discovered:
- Over the previous 15 years, gold has delivered an annualized return of 10.73% as in comparison with 12.49% from equities and over the 5-year interval ending thirty first March 2025, gold has delivered a CAGR of 14.03% vs 26.23% return in equities. A considerably larger return in equities over the previous 5 years can also be on account of decrease base 5 years again, publish the covid led market fall. This additionally displays within the efficiency of equities within the earlier 5 12 months interval, i.e. from March 2015 to March 2020, which was one of many worst durations for equities with an annualized return of simply 1.29% vs 9.65% in gold.
- When it comes to draw back threat, the utmost drawdown (most loss) {that a} gold investor would have skilled throughout this 15-year interval is 29.47% – from twenty eighth August 2013 to thirty first July 2015. As compared, the utmost drawdown in equities was 38.11% throughout the starting of the covid pandemic which was seventeenth January 2020 to twenty third March 2020.
- Extra importantly, whereas gold could also be rather less risky than equities, not like the widespread notion of gold being a safe-haven asset, it does exhibit moderately excessive volatility, particularly when in comparison with much less risky or safer asset lessons resembling mounted revenue. The 15-year annualized volatility of gold at 14.95% is simply marginally decrease than volatility of 17.11% in equities.
- What’s fascinating, nevertheless, is that there was a adverse correlation between equities and gold, which makes it an incredible asset class to enhance equities, with a purpose to cut back general portfolio volatility and enhance threat adjusted efficiency. The 15-year correlation between the 2 asset lessons is -0.22.

Knowledge supply: Ace MF, NSE. Efficiency of gold is represented by NAV of Nippon India ETF Gold BeES and efficiency of equities is represented by Nifty 500 TRI. Annualized volatility is calculated as customary deviation of the month-to-month returns multiplied by sq. root of 12. The volatility in gold costs in INR is influenced by numerous components together with worldwide gold costs, greenback motion vs INR, import obligation, taxes, and so on. Previous efficiency just isn’t an indicator of future outcomes.
The golden takeaway for traders
Whereas gold is commonly seen as a secure haven, the historic information on volatility and drawdowns counsel it is not with out threat. Nevertheless, its adverse correlation with equities makes it an fascinating asset class for diversification, serving to clean out general portfolio efficiency. As such, traders will do effectively to not go overboard with gold publicity however to have a 10-20% allocation as a wise complement to fairness and glued revenue holdings within the portfolios.
(The writer Nilesh D Naik is Head of Funding Merchandise, Share.Market (PhonePe Wealth). Views are personal)(Disclaimer: Suggestions, solutions, views and opinions given by the specialists are their very own. These don’t characterize the views of the Financial Occasions)