GOLD has confirmed its reputation as the haven of choice for investors spooked by financial and political uncertainty. People who bought it six years ago have seen their gold shoot up in value, in Australian dollar terms, by 127 per cent.
But the broader investment options available to Australians have performed more like Myer sales bunting - all over the shop.
How many times did your grandparents tell you to put your money in bricks and mortar and you couldn't go wrong? And yet, you would have done better in the past 10 years investing in gilt-edged government bonds, or in fixed-term deposits with the big banks. No risk, no sweat.
But if you factor in, for example, 50 per cent of the gross rents from investment properties, the picture changes again.
In the past 11 years, your money would have risen 194 per cent and you would have done much better than investing in 90-day bank bills (up 84 per cent), shares as measured by the all-ordinaries index (up 131 per cent) or 10-year government bonds (up 127 per cent).
If you bought into the big sharemarket-listed property trusts, your returns would have been miserable. But your dollars in Australian mining would have increased nearly five-fold.
Australian Property Monitors says the Sydney median house price rose from $366,000 in 2001 to $645,000 this year and Sydney units from $290,000 to $446,000.
SuperRatings says the median balanced-fund return in the past 10 years was 4.41 per cent a year.
