LONDON, 4 February 2014 – BBC radio's top UK and international news shows both today interviewed Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault, about the current gold market, and the outlook for prices.
A guest on BBC Radio 4's flagship Today programme this morning, "The urgency of buying gold as insurance diminished" in 2013, Adrian told Simon Jack, business editor. Because stronger returns from other asset classes, notably equities, made the need for a "crisis hedge" less clear.
Reporting BullionVault's latest Gold Investor Index, "Sentiment towards gold amongst private investors fell to an 18-month low in January," Jack told Today listeners, now totalling more than 7 million people in the UK per week.
But sentiment towards gold remained positive, Adrian replied, as the lessons of the financial crisis remained plain.
"The number one reason gold has the status it has is that gold isn't anything else," he said. "It isn't equity, it isn't credit."
Speaking later to the BBC World Service's top current affairs show, Newshour, Adrian went on to discuss the changing pattern of demand from Asian gold buyers, notably India and China.
You can hear the World Service's full Newshour interview with Adrian at 26 minutes, 40 seconds here:
