Gold Is Beating Everything. How to Get a Piece of the Action

By Jack Hough – Barron’s

Give gold bugs their due. The yellow metal has been a light in the investing darkness. At a recent $3,406 per troy ounce, it’s up 30% this year, to the envy of stock, bond, and Bitcoin holders. Cash-flow purists will call this a flash in the pan, but they should look again. Over the past 20 years, SPDR Gold Shares, an exchange-traded fund, has surged 630%—85 points more than SPDR S&P 500, which tracks shares of the biggest U.S. companies.

That isn’t supposed to happen. If businesses couldn’t be expected to outperform an unthinking metal over decades, shareholders would demand that they cease operations and hoard bullion instead. So, what’s going on?