The recent sell-off in gold and the volatility in precious metals hasn’t caused investors to dump their holdings in gold exchange traded funds, according to a report.
Despite a 10% drop in gold prices over four days through Monday, investors and traders held the course in ETFs that track bullion prices, reports Frank Tang for Reuters.
During the four-day drop, physical gold held by SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) only diminished 0.8%, even as prices fell as much as 15% over the period. [Gold, Silver ETFs Drop Along with Stocks]
“Within long, passive well-diversified portfolios, you wouldn’t necessarily see substantial selling activity within the gold trust because of a minor sell-off,” Abraham Bailin, Morningstar’s exchange-traded fund analyst, said in the Reuters report. “Depending on the market sentiment toward gold, the price performance of an asset will not always trigger any inflow/outflow event, certainly not immediately.”
It appears that investors are betting on gold as a long-term investment in light of the Eurozone debt problems and the weakening U.S. economy.
“People are not going to be easily squeezed out of their investment based on longer-term, positive bias toward gold. It’s not a mentality among funds and individual investors that’s going to be easily shaken,” David Meger, director of metals trading at Vision Financial Markets, commented.