"You don't buy an ounce of gold to eat it. You buy it basically because you're greedy, because you want to make money out of it." Ian Henderson, manager of JPMorgan Natural Resources fund, is blunt about the reasons for investing in the precious metal.

This pragmatism makes recent investor behaviour seem a little odd. The price of gold has plunged by nearly 20 per cent since it hit a record high of $1,032.70 an ounce on March 17 this year. Yet investors continue to put their money into gold funds, ignoring the daily loss of value.