Gold is a speculative, volatile investment that should be avoided by conservative investors.

It is not the value of gold that changes but currencies. What you could buy with an ounce of gold a hundred years ago, you can buy today with the same ounce of gold. The reason for the spikes dominating the gold charts over the long cycle is not gold’s volatility, but instead it is the government and/or central bank intervention to suppress the price. Once market forces overcame the intervention, gold found its natural price level, which proved to be multiples of the interventionists’ target range. Hence the spikes. If the interventionists wouldn’t have acted to keep gold’s price down the chart would have a more gradual rise, and gold’s critics would be unable to make claims of its volatility.