W. Buffet et l'or

Voici un extrait de la dernière lettre de Warren Buffet qui donne une vision assez sympa de l'investissement en or.


"... The second major category of investments involves assets that will never produce anything, but that are purchased in the buyer’s hope that someone else – who also knows that the assets will be forever
unproductive – will pay more for them in the future. Tulips, of all things, briefly became a favorite of
such buyers in the 17th century.
This type of investment requires an expanding pool of buyers, who, in turn, are enticed because they
believe the buying pool will expand still further. Owners are not inspired by what the asset itself can
produce – it will remain lifeless forever – but rather by the belief that others will desire it even more
avidly in the future.
The major asset in this category is gold, currently a huge favorite of investors who fear almost all other
assets, especially paper money (of whose value, as noted, they are right to be fearful). Gold, however,
has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative. True, gold has some
industrial and decorative utility, but the demand for these purposes is both limited and incapable of
soaking up new production. Meanwhile, if you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still
own one ounce at its end.
What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the
past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated
additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis.
As “bandwagon” investors join any party, they create their own truth – for a while.
Over the past 15 years, both Internet stocks and houses have demonstrated the extraordinary excesses that can be created by combining an initially sensible thesis with well-publicized rising prices. In these bubbles, an army of originally skeptical investors succumbed to the “proof” delivered by the market, and the pool of buyers – for a time – expanded sufficiently to keep the bandwagon rolling. But bubbles blown large enough inevitably pop. And then the old proverb is confirmed once again: “What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.”

Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it
would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At
$1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would be $9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A.
Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400
million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world’s most
profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would
have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying
binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B?
Beyond the staggering valuation given the existing stock of gold, current prices make today’s annual
production of gold command about $160 billion. Buyers – whether jewelry and industrial users,
frightened individuals, or speculators – must continually absorb this additional supply to merely
maintain an equilibrium at present prices.
A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn,
wheat, cotton, and other crops – and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the
currency may be. Exxon Mobil will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its
owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The
170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can
fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Admittedly, when people a century from now are fearful, it’s likely many will still rush to gold. I’m
confident, however, that the $9.6 trillion current valuation of pile A will compound over the century at
a rate far inferior to that achieved by pile B."