LARRY FINK: Contemporary art and luxury apartments are the new gold

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living Damien Hirst

(Wikimedia Commons)Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living."

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says contemporary art and luxury apartments are the new gold.

A report from Bloomberg on Tuesday cites comments from Fink at a recent conference in Singapore where the executive said: "The two greatest stores of wealth internationally today is contemporary art ... and I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean that as a serious asset class. And two, the other store of wealth today is apartments in Manhattan, apartments in Vancouver, in London."

Fink added: "Historically gold was a great instrument for storing of wealth ... Gold has lost its luster, and there's other mechanisms in which you can store wealth that are inflation-adjusted."

So, brutal news for gold bugs.

Since the world has mostly abandoned currencies backed by gold or other metals, gold bugs — the enthusiastic supporters of the precious metal — have seen owning gold as a hedge against inflation (or hyperinflation). Buying gold became a particularly popular trade after the financial crisis and policies by the central bank that many feared would lead to hyperinflation.

This, so far, has not been the case.

Gold prices have been under pressure over the past couple of years, with some analysts saying gold is at the end of its commodity "supercycle" and could fall to $660 an ounce.

On Tuesday morning, gold cost about $1,200 an ounce.

Read the full report at Bloomberg »

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