India, Oct. 9 -- Gold has done really well in the past six years. Prices have risen about 20% per year since 2019, so by 2025, they will have almost tripled. A lot of people consider this asset as "defensive"; therefore, its success has come as a surprise.

But anyone who understands a lot about gold knows that it has never gone in a straight line. Gold is not a steady asset that goes up in value over time, like stocks or fixed deposits. Instead, it has long periods of big price increases followed by long periods of little change.

Gold returned to where it had been for more than seven years, from 2012 to 2019. It took more than 10 years to go back to how things were in 1980. Gold didn't go up or down, even though the world was going thro...