Gold's Not as Volatile as You May Think

As you can see, gold was the second-least volatile of the group behind livestock. In fact, the annualized daily volatility for metals like zinc, palladium, lead and nickel were more than twice that of gold.

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Speaking of volatility, since peaking at a price of $1,420 on the London Exchange on Dec. 7, 2010, gold prices slid 3.7% through Jan. 14, 2011. The gold naysayers, as I affectionately call them, will likely say this is a sign gold's bull-run is over. However, the WGC points out that this is considerably less than one standard deviation move for gold. Over the past 10 years, gold's average volatility in a given month is 4.9%.