With gold at its highest price levels in a quarter century and stock markets around the world hitting multi-year peaks, it would appear to be a boom time for these assets.
When inflation is taken into account, however, long-term gold and equity investors may not be sitting on quite the cash pile Wall Street and government leaders would have them believe.
For example, the $600 that buys an ounce of gold today is worth a great deal less than $600 in 1981, the last time bullion was up around that level.
According to Nigel Gault, director of US economic research at Global Insight, a broad measure of compound consumer price inflation between 1981 and the first quarter of this year is around 119 percent.
This means that an ounce of gold would have to be changing hands at around $1,300 today to be worth the same in real terms as it was the last time it cost $600 per ounce.
"It's interesting because the economy is growing in real terms, so you would expect to see the markets frequently posting all-time highs, because the trend is (naturally) up," Gault said.
As far as stocks are concerned, the Dow Jones industrial average is currently within 600 points of its record high of 11,750 points set in January 2000.
But for the Dow to be worth the same in real terms today after taking into account 15 percent compound inflation since that peak, the index would have to rise to around 13,500 points to be worth the same.
And that is without taking into account returns or real economic expansion of around 3.5 percent a year since then.
"People need the stock market to rise just to stand still," said Gault.
Bernard Connolly, global strategist and executive director at Banque AIG in London, concurs that the simple headline level of stock markets may not be the best reflection of the market's health or investors' real wealth.
Instead, he points to total market capitalisation as a percentage of the country's overall economy as a guide to how well shareholders are doing.
At current levels of around 11,100 points, the Dow Jones industrial average's total market capitalisation is around $3.77 trillion, or 30 percent of nominal gross domestic product.
When the index was at record highs above 11,700 points in January 2000, market capitalisation totalled $4.24 trillion, or 44 percent of GDP.
The S&P index, a much broader measure of the US's corporate worth, hit a five-year high last week of 1,314 points. Its market capitalisation on Friday stood at $11.74 trillion.
When the index reached its all-time high of 1,553 points in March 2000, market cap nudged $13 trillion, or 134 percent of that quarter's GDP.
As for gold, Connolly is adamant that real prices suggest potential for more upside despite more than doubling in price in the last four years.
"Even at $590/oz, gold is dirt cheap," Connolly said.
And that is not even taking into account the global geopolitical situation, he added.
"The risks in the world seem to me to be so big that it's just unthinkable that an investor will have a global portfolio that doesn't include gold," Connolly said.
If in the worst case scenario these events conspire to push the global economy over the edge, then there is no limit to how high gold prices might go, Connolly said, adding that $1,000 per ounce and beyond is easily reachable.
But even at $1,000, gold - in real dollar terms - will still be below early 1980s levels.
Of course, an investor holding gold bought in September 1999 when bullion was barely above $250/oz would be well in the money.
The yellow metal's 136 percent surge in nominal dollar terms since then far outstrips the compound 19 percent inflation increase over the period.
In this context, Frank Holmes, chairman and chief executive officer at US Global Investors in San Antonio with around $2.2 billion in mutual funds assets, warns against "cherry-picking" dates.
Still, Holmes says gold remains undervalued, and cites the ratio of gold-oil prices, which he says has averaged around 17 over the last 30 years.
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