I was wrong about gold. Here's what I've learned.

Summary: For years, gold was easy to dismiss in a long-term portfolio. But what happens when the facts change and old convictions no longer fully fit the world we live in? This note revisits a long-held view on gold, what it missed and if it now deserves a place in your portfolio. A reader's email some days back landed at exactly the wrong moment or perhaps the right one. I opened Rajeev's email on a Sunday. In the background, the news was impossible to ignore. Israel had struck Iran. Ayatollah Khamenei was dead. Oil tankers were stuck in the Strait of Hormuz. Markets hadn't opened, but you could feel what was coming. Rajeev has been a Value Research reader for 20 years. His investments, he says, were shaped by my advice. Then came his quiet, devastating point: gold was about Rs 6,000 per 10 grams when he started investing in 2005-06. Today it trades above Rs 1,60,000. "If I had not followed your suggestions regarding investments in gold, I might have been richer."

This article was originally published on March 16, 2026.