New Delhi, Feb. 12 -- The typical story of retail investors joining market rallies at their fag end might be playing out in gold, with its exchange traded funds (ETFs) recording a late gush of inflows. In January, these reached Rs.24,040 crore, according to data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India, up several fold from Rs.3,742 crore as recently as in November.

Notably, this is the first time that monthly gold ETF inflows have exceeded the intake of equity mutual funds, which slowed to Rs.24,029 crore in January from Rs.29,911 crore in November.

At work, clearly, was the lustre of gold's past-year gains as the US began to rattle the world order. Anxiety over paper assets that drove the gold rally, though, may have peaked, goin...