Gold as an investment

The value of gold, in terms of the real goods and services that it can buy, has remained largely stable for many years. In 1900, the gold price was $20.67/oz, which equates to about $503/oz in today's prices. In the two years to end-December 2006, the actual price of gold averaged $524. So the real price of gold changed very little over a century characterized by sweeping change and repeated geopolitical shocks.
In these days when the stock market has more than -30% of it's previous high, Fixed deposits in banks offer less than @10% taxable return - Gold can be a very good investment option.
It is interesting to note that Gold doesn't have a correlation with the other asset classes like bond, share or cash. So it can be a good tool for portfolio diversification. One can keep @5% assets in Gold. Invest in Gold in the form of bars, coins, Exchange Traded Fund etc.