Maria Aspan

It's something physical that a lot of cultures have decided has inherent value, but it doesn't do anything to actually make the price go up.

It's just kind of what external factors are making other investors decide that

It's more expensive.

And as we've seen in the past year, there's kind of an element of like FOMO right now.

You know, the price of gold has been going up.

So should I buy gold?

Because I don't want to miss out on this investment that's going up and up.

One investor I talked to called it the momentum trade.

And, you know, that comes back to gold.

Central banks are buying more into gold.

So retail investors see the price go up and they buy more into gold.

And that's all great until something happens to kind of snap the spell.

And we're all like, oh, wait, maybe we are overexposed to gold right now.

Over the long haul, the stock market outperforms gold.

You know, there have been years when gold has outperformed the stock market, but over like the last 30 years, the S&P 500 has returned about 10% and gold has returned less than that.

It's over the last 30 years or so, gold has returned more along the lines of 8%.

Personally, I'm not sure it would be.

But, you know, I'm not a certified financial planner, but I've talked about it with certified financial planners like

Lee Baker.

He is the founder and CEO of Claris Financial Advisors in Atlanta.