Majority of Germans consider gold a safe investment

Deutsche Börse Commodities: Nine out of ten Germans believe investing in gold is safe – yet fewer than one in three include gold in their investment portfolio structure. The biggest gap between attitudes and investment behaviour lies with the 30 to 39-year-olds: although an above-average number of people (51 percent) in this age group believe that gold is very safe, only 29 percent of those surveyed actually invest in it. This was the finding of a representative study with over 1,000 respondents conducted by the opinion polling institute TNS Emnid on behalf of Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH.

Confidence in gold clearly increases with net household income. While just shy of half (45 percent) of higher-income individuals with a monthly household net income of over €2,500 consider gold a very safe investment, only one third of those with disposable income of less than €1,000 per month feel the same way. “There are marked differences especially in how gold is used as an investment. While lower-income groups tend to have more gold jewellery, higher-income groups invest more frequently in products such as Xetra-Gold,” said Steffen Orben, managing director of Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH. Overall, the percentage of people surveyed who invest in gold is almost identical across all income groups. The level of investment in other precious metals lags significantly behind.

Savings accounts remain the most popular form of investment in Germany, with 61 percent answering that they hold their assets here. More than two thirds of young people aged between 14 and 29 trust in savings accounts despite current low interest rates. Material assets such as real estate followed closely behind at 57 percent of those polled. Confidence in these assets rises with income: people with net household income of more than €2,500 prefer material assets to savings accounts.


About the survey
The data used in this media release was collected by the market research institute TNS Emnid. The survey sample size was 1,004. The survey was conducted from 3 April 2013 to 4 April 2013. The information was gathered by telephone survey. The results are weighted and representative for the German population over the age of 14.


About Xetra-Gold
The Xetra-Gold bond (ISIN: DE000A0S9GB0) combines the advantages of physical gold with the transparency and low costs of exchange-trading of securities. There is no ongoing management fee. Each bond represents the option of delivery of one gram of gold and can be bought or sold continuously via the Xetra trading platform. Clearstream Banking Frankfurt (CBF), a Deutsche Börse subsidiary, stores the gold in its vault. The physical gold is supplied, monitored and processed by industry partner Umicore AG & Co. KG. The safe custody of the gold reserves at Clearstream meets high security standards and saves investors the costs of transporting and physically storing the gold. Private investors can obtain the underlying gold in physical form from their bank if desired. The product meets the provisions of the European UCITS directive.


About Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH
The issuer Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH, based in Frankfurt, is a joint venture between Deutsche Börse AG and the banking partners Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Bank AG, DZ Bank AG, B. Metzler seel. Sohn & Co. KGaA, and Swiss-based bank Vontobel. Umicore AG & Co. KG, a Group subsidiary of Umicore s.a. which operates several gold refineries across the globe and manufactures gold bars, is also a partner. The partners bundle their stock exchange, financial market, settlement, custody and logistics expertise and provide an efficient and transparent market in the financial centre of Frankfurt for gold trading in Europe. With just one product, Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH is the second largest issuer of ETCs/commodity certificates traded on stock exchanges in Germany.

Xetra® and Xetra-Gold® are registered trademarks of Deutsche Börse AG.