Motives for Holding Gold

The main aim of this work is to study the motives behind gold investment with a special focus on gold’s store of value, safe haven, hedging and portfolio diversification properties. The research question is why these properties do not always hold in different time regimes, geographical locations and socio-economical systems. In order to meet this objective, a literature overview of each property of gold is presented. Overall, the findings suggest that gold has always served as a store of value and always acted as a portfolio diversifier. However, gold’s property to act as a safe haven, an inflation and currency hedge did not hold at all times and in all countries.