Gold has long been sold to investors as a hedge against inflation. That story is appealing, intuitive and wrong far more often than it is right. Rob Brown and Bo Wang, authors of the study “Gold: The Ultimate Behavior Bias,” published in the June 2026 issue of The Journal of Investing, make the case that gold is not a reliable inflation mitigant and that its popularity owes much more to behavioral bias than to evidence.
Brown and Wang took a different approach to the question. Instead of asking whether gold rises when inflation rises, they asked: Does adding gold to a portfolio improve investor outcomes over a meaningful investment horizon when inflation is high? That distinction matters because the real issue is not whether gold sometimes moves with inflation, but whether it improves the results of a diversified portfolio.
Brown and Wang used monthly data from September 1913 through June 2025 and focused on a hypothetical investor with a 7.5-year horizon.
