the thing that is hard to work out about gold

from what I can see anyway,

it is very hard to feel confident about it's demand in deciding whether to invest or buy directly or through companies producing it for these reasonsl

1. it is not needed to survive and consequently if you needed to cash from it, people would be less willing to pay up for a bar of gold or fund the buying of gold when they cannot rely on the salable return from it.

2. Compare it to housing (materials going into housing) or food, or infrastructure materials (i.e. other commodities.

Gold definately is hard to rely on as an asset/investment class, unless driven on fear or tradeability for short term returns.