Gold” said famed investor Warren Buffett in 1998, “gets dug out of the ground in Africa or someplace, then we melt it down, dig another hole
bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”
Yet for all that, we remain in love with gold – especially in times of uncertainty. With the COVID-19 crisis, interest in gold has soared, driving its price to historic highs (eclipsing its past record set back in August 2011).
Even Buffett seems to have softened his longstanding antipathy, with his company Berkshire Hathaway acquiring a US$565 million stake in the world’s second-largest gold miner, Canada’s Barrick Gold Corporation.