Gold has beaten equities in local currency returns across emerging markets, excluding India, in the past 23 years. According to data compiled by DSP Mutual Fund, the yellow metal’s returns in most emerging market currencies have been 0.4% to 7.9% higher on a compounded basis than their stocks.
The exception has been India, with equity returns exceeding that of gold by 0.7% emerging markets tend to have chronic economic, political, or governance issues, resulting in currencies depreciating and adding to gold returns, said Sahil Kapoor, head- products and market strategist at DSP Mutual Fund.
Gold returns from local currencies in Turkey, Malaysia, Taiwan, and South Korea have yielded the highest returns over local equities.