Gold is probably a better investment than landed prop - unless you can afford to buy cash.

Assume RM100k base investment.

Option A) Use RM100k to invest into gold.
Option B) Use RM100k as downpayment to buy a RM1M landed prop and rent out + cap appreciation.

Option A) = no return except based on cap appreciation. Costs? Low to none, if you keep at home, low cost if you keep it in the Bank (safe deposit).

Option B) = cashflow negative return, so basically you hope for cap appreciation if you want any form of return until the 30 year loan period is up.
Costs?
1) Homeowner insurance.
2) Taxes (cukai pintu, cukai tanah, etc)
3) Maintenance
4) Management fees.

Basically your costs are a lot more than gold and to top it off you get taxes if you sell < 5 years (RPGT).

In both cases your only form of return (within the medium term) is in cap gains.

For gold - further advantages:
a) It is easily transferrable. If touch wood you go bankrupt, just transfer the gold to your family member and no one may be the wiser assuming you do it well. Property? Don't think the bank is stupid.
b) It is portable. If ever you need to leave the country in a hurry, 1 kg of gold is light, concealable and easily brought even on a flight. How are you going to bring your DSTH with you?
c) It can be hid. In a worst case scenario, dig a hole in your garden one midnight and bury the gold - dig it up later. Can you do that with prop? No way Jose.

So yeah, I'd rather buy gold when its low than props when its high.

for the battle for gold, I am in the down camp  of coz now trading sideways, but trend seems down
anyway, those buying gold on the dip. they may be right or wrong. its all about risk management 
who knows? if they win, its their moolah, if they lose, then its also their moolah. lets step back in time 

we ignore those small fetish jewelry buyers as their buying cant really move the market 
Specifically, the central banks of six countries are adding gold to their official foreign reserves, according to The World Gold Council’s most recent report on global central bank holdings. are Russia, Turkey, South Korea, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Iraq  such powderful strong countries which moves world economy

Many large nations, including the U.S., Germany, France and Japan, based on GDP, have not posted much change in their official gold holdings over the past several quarters. But India and China were no longer the demand mechanisms they had been in the past.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/countries...=MW_latest_news

1) Friday , 15 Feb 2013
news emerged that Soros Fund Management and Moore Capital had both sold significant proportions of the gold ETF and Fund holdings during Q4 2012.  Some comfort for investors remained in that Paulson & Co (John Paulson’s investment vehicle) maintained its SPDR Gold Trust holding at 21.8 million shares – the fund’s largest investment.
As I write gold has slipped back below $1630 and ounce
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/...78033&sn=Detail
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1206301-so...ke-is-gold-done

2) Paulson & Company
The Gold Fund was launched in January 2010 and the mandate of this fund is not simply to own gold or gold mining stocks, but to outperform the price of gold. Paulson & Co. believes that this will play out very well for the next five years or so because they anticipate rising gold prices due to the quantitative easing coming from the fed that could lead to depreciation of the US dollar and that gold would also be a good hedge against any turbulence coming from the ongoing Euro crisis.

While the fund does use derivatives to get exposure to gold, it invests significantly in individual gold miners such as AngloGold as these companies can have significant financial leverage when the gold price moves upwards.
http://www.hedgefundletters.com/category/paulson/

3) Soros Fund Management
In his book "The Alchemy of Finance", Soros said that he was never good at math and math is not really important. Soros Fund Management makes directional bets based off of fundamental macro research. They can invest in any asset they deem mispriced. His comment on math is an inference to the fact that, if it's so mispriced that you have to start doing really complicated math to figure out, it's probably not a big mispricing and not worth his time. Also an allusion to the importance of qualitative elements.

Considered a short term speculator, Soros made a name for himself in bonds and currencies, translating economic trends into leveraged plays in the industry. He had a knack for making successful best on the direction the markets would take and he described them as ‘chaotic’. Soros believed that prices of currencies and securities were due to the humans that bought and sold the assets and that they acted primarily on their emotions instead of on logic.

Soros felt that traders often influenced one another and that they moved in herds, something he did himself. However, whenever he saw an opportunity to move ahead of the herd, he did, going on his ‘instinctive, physical reaction’ to the markets to tell when to buy and sell.
https://www.mayzus.com/forum/showthread.php...9s-George-Soros

4) TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013
"Gold was destroyed as a safe haven, proved to be unsafe. Because of the disappointment, most people are reducing their holdings of gold," Soros told the newspaper in an interview published at the weekend.

"But the central banks will continue to buy them, so I don't expect gold to go down. If you have the prospect of a crisis, you will have occasional flurries or jumps. So gold is very volatile on a day-to-day basis, no trend on a longer-term basis."

Soros, who called gold "the ultimate bubble" in 2011, slashed his position in the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Trust, by more than half to 600,000 shares in the fourth quarter of 2012 from 1.32 million in the third quarter.
http://www.thedailybell.com/28990/Soros-Go...Haven-No-Longer

5) 4/15/2013 @ 7:24PM
An implosion that appears to have started in the gold market last Friday spread throughout the commodities complex on Monday, with everything from crude oil to soybeans falling.  Physical gold lost more than $200 per ounce, sliding nearly 15% over the past two trading sessions.

John Paulson, of the eponymous hedge fund with approximately $20 billion under management, took a big hit.  Just with his positions in gold miners Paulson lost more than $171 million over the past two trading sessions, if his latest disclosed holdings remained unchanged.  Add an additional $430 million in losses from his 21.8 million stake in the SPDR Gold Trust, and total paper losses climb to $601 million.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/...gold-bloodbath/

6) Year 2013 gonna be interesting  should I increase puts option or await usa friday gdp report 
RICHARD RUSSELL: I See A Bearish Pattern In The Latest Buffett, Paulson, And Soros Trades
So I don't know exactly what the billionaires are thinking, but I do see what they're doing -- they are avoiding consumer stocks and building up cash.
http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-rus...on-soros-2013-4