The yields of physical gold tend to be poor. If you buy gold jewelry, for example, you may not earn as much when you sell it as you did when you bought it. Storing physical gold securely can be difficult, as it is vulnerable to theft. Physical gold will never be a passive and constant source of income.
There are some real headaches that come with investing and owning gold. Storing gold costs money and is subject to theft and destruction. Of course, there are ways around it. For example, you can invest in ETFs as a way to expose yourself to gold without owning it.
But if you actually buy gold, storage is definitely a problem you'll have to address. The point here is that gold is not always a good investment. The best time to invest in almost any asset is when there is negative sentiment and the asset is cheap, which provides substantial upside potential when it returns to favor, as stated above. To be fair, precious metals have a history of volatility and a tendency to rapid and often significant price swings.
But these are very big changes in a very short period of time. They suggest that investors are concerned about the stock market.
