Gold Becoming Favorite Inflation Hedge In Asia

That's according to an ING survey of 3,700 high-net-worth Asian investos outside of Japan. As Mineweb reports:

With economic growth in Asia expected to lead the world again in 2010, 45 percent of investors in the region's markets outside of Japan picked the precious metal as their most favoured tool to protect their returns from inflation, while 42 percent chose equities, according to [the] quarterly survey from ING.

In the final quarter of 2009, gold was still only the fourth-favourite choice among investors, even though the percentage of investors expecting a rise in inflation in 2010 climbed 6 percentage points to 77 percent, suggesting there is room for gold to rise....

Interestingly, given the People's Bank of China's attempt to rein inflation in, 87 percent of the Chinese investors surveyed expected inflation to increase.