Gold provides no yield because it has no counterparty risk

JAMES TURK : Yes, gold doesn't provide yield because it doesn't have counterparty risk. If you want to put your gold at risk and lend it to someone you can generate yield on that. So right now people don't want that counterparty risk because they don't know whether their gold is going to be returned or whether the euro's they haven't deposited in their bank is going to be returned, if the bank goes belly-up, or the purchasing power of the euros they put on deposit will be returned because of inflation as a result of all the quantitative easing and money printing that's going on around the world. So you can't really look at some of those "straw man" arguments against gold because they don't think they carry any weight. The more important thing is what's been actually happening in over the last 11 years - the gold price has risen in US dollar terms at an average annual rate of appreciation of 17%. Now have you been earning 17% on your dollar deposits or euro deposits every year? You haven't and so gold is going to become more and more attractive as people understand that gold is still undervalued and still very much useful, and you know, valuation is more important than price. They are different things - as long as an asset is undervalued you should continue to accumulate it and by all my historical measures, gold is still undervalued. - in mineweb