Precious metals safest bet in 2010

Precious Metals

Lloyds TSB have revealed that precious metals, gold, silver and platinum, have been the best performing assets during 2010, beating other asset classes like international bonds and UK commercial property.

Precious metals rose in value by 9.7 percent, gold spearheading the charge with its own rise of 13.5 percent.

Five out of the nine asset classes that were analysed showed positive returns for their investors, with the remaining four showing a loss.

The nine asset classes evaluated were, in order of performance, precious metals, UK commercial property, UK bonds, international bonds, cash, UK residential property, commodities, UK shares and international shares.

Commercial property showed encouraging growth, coming fractionally behind precious metals at 9.6 percent.

Suren Thiru, an economist at Lloyds TSB, said: "Gold continues to maintain its position as the ultimate safe haven investment, against a backdrop of the debt problems in Europe and concerns over the prospects for economic growth and inflation. This is despite a weakening in its value over recent weeks.”

Thiru added that: "The outlook for domestic assets will be driven, in part, by how sensitive the fledgling economic recovery, both globally and in the UK, is to the impending period of fiscal austerity. The level of demand from emerging markets, such as China and India, is also likely to remain an important determinant of many assets prices."