Gold Investing: Market Insights & ASX Stocks

Gold’s been storing value for thousands of years because it does something simple – it stays the same when everything else changes. When inflation hits, wars break out, or politics gets messy, gold holds steady. Central banks know this, investors know this, and that’s why it still anchors portfolios.

As government debt levels climb, we’ve seen money printed at record levels, meaning the money you have in your bank account has less buying power than it did yesterday. Gold is that hedge, it counters government debt with increased value as a safe haven as people look to move away from currencies such as the US dollar.

Gold trades in US dollars per ounce around the clock. When the dollar weakens, gold typically strengthens. The dollar will weaken when governments print more money to prop up an economy, it is a quick fix, but it more often than not doesn’t help the underlying cause. Printing money to spend your way out of debt usually doesn’t work.

Interest rates matter, lower rates make gold more attractive, as people look for something to give them a better return than the basic bank interest rate. Inflation expectations push it around too, higher inflation means less purchasing power, bringing the safe haven that is gold back to the forefront.

Sometimes fear alone drives it higher – no complicated analysis needed, when governments and people are worried, buying goes up, as we saw with lines outside gold mints in 2025.

You can own the metal itself through bars, coins, or ETFs that hold physical gold or invest in a basket group of gold companies, or you can buy shares in gold mining companies yourself.

Physical gold tracks the spot price directly and can be bought and sold at your local mint. Gold ETFs invest in a basket of companies determined by a fund manager who will weight a portfolio across a spread of gold companies, giving you leverage to a number of gold companies.

Investing in gold miners, or exploration companies, gives you leverage to the gold price and discoveries – when gold runs, good producers can outperform the metal itself. When it falls, they fall harder, as do explorers who don’t find gold.

Gold gives investors exposure to a proven store of value, but listed gold companies give that exposure real upside. Owning producers or explorers ties you to the gold price and to operational performance – when sentiment turns, equities tend to move first and fastest. That’s why most investors today play the gold theme through the ASX, not by holding the metal itself.

If you back the right gold company it can be a portfolio maker, for example Northern Star Resources (ASX: NST) was 30c per share in 2009, in 2025 it had rocketed to over $26 per share. A return of over 8,500% for long time holders, conversely if you held a gold bar itself during that period, you’d be up over 300%.

Start with production costs versus the gold price, meaning how much it costs the company to pull an ounce of gold out of the ground. The wider that gap, the more money they’re making per ounce.

Then look at mine life (how many years of gold they’ve got left) and jurisdiction. A decent deposit in Australia or Canada beats a great one in a country where the government might change the rules overnight. Management’s track record tells you the rest, the teams that have built and run mines before tend to do it again. The ones promising the world from their first project often don’t.

If you’re looking for a gold explorer, follow the old adage that “the best place to find a new mine is in the shadow of an old one”. Historic gold mines are often a great place for a junior explorer to start, modern day exploration and mining methods often mean that the company is potentially more likely to find gold.