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of Gold and other precious metals, conclude that “Gold shows the characteristics of a Zero-Beta asset […] We find that an investment in gold bullion adds no systematic risk to an investor’s portfolio. An estimate of the capital asset pricing model yields a beta that is statistically indifferent from zero. [10] ”

Anyway, within the same paper, McCowon and Zimmerman, analyzing Gold, Silver, US T-Bills and US Stocks return between 1970 and 2003 observe that gold standard deviation was strongly higher than T-Bills and Stocks. Although its low Beta, Gold’s high volatility put it forward as a candidate for a risky asset.

Most certainly, the investment peculiarity that really sets Gold apart is its behavior in response to periods characterized by strong market instability. Unlike the majority of other investments assets or securities, Gold value is inclined to rise in the course of negative market periods.

The 2007-2010 financial crisis has been an excellent example of this financial characteristic as Gold price has dramatically risen reaching his historical peak while the great majority of World’s Stocks Exchanges Indexes sharply declined to levels touched 20 years ago.

The reason that generally caused strong appreciations of commodities and precious metals in relation to other assets and stocks has been explained by Jim Rogers, author of ‘Hot Commodities [11] ’, the most famous book concerning commodity markets, and considered one of the most relevant investments and commodities specialist word widely. The creation of Rogers International Commodity Index (RICI) in 1998 and the co-foundation with George Soros of the Hedge Fund “Quantum Fund” are just two examples of Rogers’ success as an author, economic commentator, investor and financial guru.

Rogers explain that, when economic growth and productive capacity increase, the quantity of commodities that can be produced or extracted augment as well, generally leading to a reduction for the majority of commodity prices. Commodities depreciation give a hand to companies to increase their margins and profits and consequentially driving companies stocks prices to rise.

On the contrary, during periods characterized by low economic performance and efficiency, commodity prices tend to increase, obstructing companies to get high margins from their activities and consequentially leading to a drop in their shares price.

This discourse can only partially be applied to Gold as the precious metal is not a common commodity employed in many production process as oil or natural gas. Gold is used in Jewelry, dental and industrial application but its main role is still to be a store of value as well as an hedge instrument, saved in Central Banks coffers.

Gold price has experienced an outstanding increase within the last decade, almost quadrupling from January 2000 to nowadays. The huge increase is in line with the performances obtained by many other commodities. The Dow-Jones UBS commodity index (DJUBS) showed an increase of 140% within the same period, before collapsing in July 2008. In fact, from July 2008 commodities speculative bubble burst, all the major indexes commodity portfolios indexes loss 50% of their value on average [12] .

Even if Gold is one of the portfolio components within the great majority of these commodity indexes, its performance from July 2008 has dramatic