But there could be a modest role for gold in your portfolio. Returns from gold tend to be very little correlated with the returns from paper assets. Hence, even modest holdings (say, 5 percent of the portfolio) can help an investor reduce the variability of the total portfolio. And if inflation were to reemerge, gold would likely produce acceptable returns. Small gold holdings can easily be obtained now by purchasing shares in one of the mutual funds or ETFs concentrating on gold.
