By
Morningstar
:
By Michael Rawson, CFA
At a joint meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank held in Tokyo in October, Federal Reserve chairman Ben
Bernanke said that central bankers in emerging economies should
"refrain from intervening in foreign-exchange markets, thereby
allowing the currency to rise." Of course, for one currency to
rise, another must fall. It can be argued that the Fed chairman was
suggesting that the U.S. dollar is overvalued and could be due for
a decline.
Elsewhere Bernanke has emphasized on several occasions that
monetary policy, controlled by the central bank, is doing all it
can to spur the economy and that fiscal policy, the purview of the
government, needs to be more aggressive. In recent decades,
monetary policy has been run independently of fiscal policy. That
said, many claim that the Fed has become increasingly politicized,
and some politicians have gone so far as to suggest that Ben
Bernanke be fired or that the government should strip control of
monetary policy from the Fed and return to the gold standard.
Meanwhile, though the Fed's policies of quantitative easing are
potentially inflationary, inflation has been benign to date. But
many investors, fearful of equities since the financial crisis and
spooked by the specter of inflation in an era of "QEternity," have
increasingly considered gold for their portfolios. Gold has
historically proved to be an effective inflation hedge, and a
declining dollar is positive for bullion prices. But just what role
should gold play in a traditional stock and bond portfolio? In this
article, we will examine where gold might fit in your portfolio and
highlight our favorite exchange-traded funds that offer exposure to
the yellow metal.
Hard to Value, Hard to Ignore
Unlike productive assets such as farmland or dividend-paying
stocks, gold seems to lack the fundamental characteristics
necessary for valuation. With gold there will be no stream of
widgets to sell or cash flows to discount. Warren Buffett famously
mused on gold: "[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or
someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again
and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility.
Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head." While
Martians may be scratching their heads, it seems that many rational
investors covet gold. Ben Bernanke has argued that gold is not
money and that it is held by central banks largely out of
tradition. He has also offered some insight into the way many
investors value gold. The Fed chairman has said that people hold
gold as a protection against tail risk--low probability events with
big implications. These so-called "black swans" might include a
massive sell-off in the stock market or hyperinflation.
Reliable data for gold prices from the London Bullion Market
Association extends back to 1973. If we regress the price of gold
on movements in the stock market and next year's inflation back to
1973, we find that the price of gold responds positively to both
increases in inflation and declines in the stock market.
Two time periods play a big role in explaining this
relationship. The stock market fell 15% in 1973 and a further 26%
in 1974. Meanwhile, inflation jumped from 3% in 1972 to 9% in 1973
and ramped up to 12% in 1974. During this span, gold proved a
fantastic inflation hedge, climbing 73% in 1973 and 66% in 1974.
Gold proved its worth as a tail-risk hedge again during the most
recent financial crisis, rising 4% in 2008 when the S&P 500
Index plummeted 37%. For the 10 years through year-end 2011, gold
was up 450%, trouncing the 30% return of the S&P 500 Index.
The charts below show the annual performance of gold based on
sorting and bucketing stocks or inflation into five buckets.
(click to enlarge)
- source: Morningstar Analysts
(click to enlarge)
- source: Morningstar Analysts
How Much to Own? And Where Does It Fit?
An asset that rises in value when most other assets decline should
be very valuable. It can be thought of as a kind of insurance. To
insure against bad times (that is, the aforementioned tail risks),
people are willing to accept small losses in good times. Because
the price of gold is sensitive to changes in inflation or the
prospects of a disaster, a little bit goes a long way. For those
who have decided to own some gold in their portfolios, we feel that
5% is an appropriate weight.
This study
from Campbell Harvey and Claude Erb suggests a 2% weight of gold in
the market portfolio while an Ibbotson study suggests at least a 7%
weight.
So, how does gold fit into a portfolio? A 60/40 portfolio of
stocks and bonds will have a slightly higher return and slightly
lower risk when holding a 5% position in gold, resulting in a
higher risk-adjusted return. From 1973 through September 2012, a
60/40 portfolio of the S&P 500 Index and intermediate-term
government bonds had an annualized return of 9.4% and an annualized
standard deviation of 9.9%. Adding a 5% position to gold and
reducing stocks to 58% and bonds to 37% would increase the
portfolio's annualized return to 9.6% and reduce its annualized
standard deviation to 9.4%. That slightly higher return is mostly a
function of the time period chosen. Over the past hundred years or
so, stocks have massively outperformed gold. So, over the long
term, investors could have earned higher returns in stocks and
bonds but the overall portfolio risk would have been lower with a
small position in gold, resulting in better risk-adjusted
returns.
How to Get Exposure
Unlike most other commodities, physical ownership of gold is
feasible and efficient via exchange-traded products because of the
high value per unit of size and durability of gold. In our opinion,
there are three gold
ETFs
worthy of consideration: IShares Gold Trust(
IAU
) , SPDR Gold Shares(
GLD
) , and ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares(
SGOL
) . IAU is our preferred choice for long-term investors. Its
expense ratio of 0.25% undercuts GLD by 0.15%, which helped IAU win
the
retail award
for the precious-metals category in our inaugural U.S. ETF Awards.
IAU is adequately liquid and has a lower holding cost because of
its lower expense ratio. However, GLD is the preferred choice for
billionaires and hedge funds looking to trade millions of dollars a
day, as GLD has much greater liquidity than IAU. For those who
would sleep better having their gold vaulted in Zurich, my
colleague Samuel Lee has highlighted SGOL
here
.
Disclosure:
Morningstar, Inc. licenses its indexes to institutions for a
variety of reasons, including the creation of investment products
and the benchmarking of existing products. When licensing indexes
for the creation or benchmarking of investment products,
Morningstar receives fees that are mainly based on fund assets
under management. As of Sept. 30, 2012, AlphaPro Management,
BlackRock Asset Management, First Asset, First Trust, Invesco,
Merrill Lynch, Northern Trust, Nuveen, and Van Eck license one or
more Morningstar indexes for this purpose. These investment
products are not sponsored, issued, marketed, or sold by
Morningstar. Morningstar does not make any representation regarding
the advisability of investing in any investment product based on or
benchmarked against a Morningstar index.
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