Theprice of goldhit a fresh all time high of $1,900 an ounce on Tuesday as investors continued to fret over the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone and its impact on the global banking industry.
Having risen by a third since the beginning of 2011 and nearly fivefold since 2004, one analyst believes the precious metal is now in bubble territory and an "absurdity".
"Gold is not money and has no investment yield and in fact incurs carrying/storage costs. With the 10 year US treasury rate at 2 percent and storage cost of 1-1.5 percent this implies an annual opportunity cost of 3-3.5 percent,” said John Wadle, the head of regional banks research at Mirae Asset in Hong Kong in a research note sent to CNBC on Tuesday.
With global gold reserves now worth over $9 trillion and the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Index worth nearly a third of that level combined, Wadle believes gold is now a “bubble compared to US blue chip stocks”.
“For those pundits that believe gold will keep rising to $2,500 an ounce, let's do some simple math: the current reservoir would be valued at $12 trillion and the next 20 years of production would produce gold worth $3.8 trillion, bringing the total value to $15.8 trillion” said Wadle.
“Even assuming earnings for the Dow stocks rise by only 2 percent (Japanese deflation scenario) over the next 20 years and the market only trades on a P/E of 10x an investor would still make 130 percent over this period,” he said.
To match this return gold would need to top $4,400 an ounce according to Wadle.
“This is absurd,” he said.