Bengt Saelensminde writing in Moneyweek says gold is a misunderstood asset. It’s often portrayed as a safety play – but how can it be? Only recently it fell more than 15% within a few days. As the market got twitchy over Europe, this so-called safety-play even underperformed stocks. Gold is also often wrongly considered a great diversifier for your portfolio. While it’s closer to the mark to say that gold’s a hedge against inflation – that’s not necessarily the case either. I mean, inflation hardly went away during the '80s and '90s, yet gold’s price drifted all the while.