It’s a golden era for gold.
The price of gold is up 74% over the past year and 201% over five years. Gold has been outperforming stocks.
Is it time to add some gold to your retirement account?
On top of its spectacular recent performance, gold can function as an effective “hedge” in an investment account, advisers say. The reason: The gold market and stock market often move in different directions.
“It’s a diversifier,” said Stephen Kates, a financial analyst at Bankrate. Gold “tends to have lower correlation to stocks and bonds. If we look just in the last year, obviously gold has had tremendous growth. In hindsight, it’s obvious why we would want to own it.”
The downside to gold: It hasn’t always performed so well. Adjusted for inflation, gold was worth about as much in late 2024 as in early 1980.
“Historically, the S&P 500 has outperformed gold,” said Jeff Farrar, a certified financial planner in Shelton, Connecticut. “Since COVID, that’s not been the case, and especially in the last 12 to 18 months.”
Economists speak of gold as a “store of value” because it tends to retain value over time. Gold has limited supply and a long shelf life. It can’t be printed, like dollars, or created out of thin air, like cryptocurrency. Those qualities tend to insulate it against inflation, changing currency values and economic uncertainty.
“When things go south, gold tends to go up,” Kates said.
U.S. gold prices spiked in 2025 because of global trade tensions, slackening demand for the dollar, and strong interest in gold from central banks and investors, according to an analysis by J.P. Morgan.
Gold reached a historic high near $5,560 an ounce in January 2026, according to Gold Price. Prices have wavered since then, and gold’s value hovered below $5,200 an ounce on March 6.
The price of gold is up 74% in the past year and 201% over five years.
Is now a good time to buy gold?
With most investments, the cardinal rule is to buy low and sell high. Gold has been trading high.
But gold isn’t like other investments. It’s hard to predict gold’s future price, financial experts say, because it’s hard to predict the future.
“When people are concerned or anxious, then gold tends to go up,” Kates said. But gold prices have trended downward during the Iran war, a moment of global uncertainty.
Gold is slipping because the U.S. dollar has strengthened, and because gold prices were already elevated, among other reasons, according to Investopedia.
“There’s no perfect price for gold,” Kates said. But “there’s kind of a floor on its price, because gold is never going to go away.”
Investment advisers say gold can function as an effective “hedge” in a brokerage account.
How much gold should an ordinary investor buy?
Investment advisers tend to think of gold as a small player in a larger portfolio, one typically dominated by stocks.
Advertisement
“I’m talking 2 to 5% of the portfolio. It’s not a huge amount,” said Melissa Cox, a certified financial planner in Dallas.
Farrar concurs: “You should consider a single-digit exposure in gold as part of a diversified portfolio,” he said.
There are several ways to invest in gold, both direct and indirect. We’ll focus on options that would be open to an average retirement saver.
Gold ETFs
Anyone with a brokerage account should be able to invest in exchange traded funds in gold.
Gold ETFs such as SPDR Gold Shares, abbreviated as GLD, give investors a stake in “real gold bars, secured in some of the world’s most sophisticated vault systems,” Investopedia reports. Gold ETFs have expanded investor access to gold, “eliminating the traditional hurdles of storage, transport, and authentication,” Investopedia says.
And the ETFs operate with minimal management fees, compared with some of the other options below.
“I’m leaning more toward the gold ETFs, just because the fees and expenses seem to be a lot lower,” Cox said.
Gold mutual funds
Few 401(k) plans allow investors to purchase actual gold, Investopedia says, but gold-adjacent mutual funds abound.
Funds such as Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio invest not in gold itself, but in gold exploration, mining and processing.
One downside to gold mutual funds, Fidelity notes, is that they are still “paper assets tied to stock-market behavior, not real gold.” The funds can lose value when the stock market sinks, which is “exactly the scenario gold investors are trying to hedge against,” Fidelity says.
Gold IRAs
For the true gold aficionado, another option is to open a Gold IRA, a self-directed retirement account that allows the owner to hold actual gold.
But Gold IRAs have drawbacks.
“It is not as easy to open,” Kates said, “because you aren’t going to get a gold-only IRA through the larger investment firms.”
Fees run high, too, because the investor is paying a premium for the safe storage of their gold in a repository.
“Those fees might be 1 to 3% annually,” Kates said. “It’s 10 times what you would pay for an ETF. And that’s ongoing.”
Beware of taxes
Farrar adds one cautionary note for gold investors: The IRS considers gold a collectible. If you sell gold investments outside a tax-favored account, you face potential capital gains taxes that max out at 28%, a higher rate than the one for stocks.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gold prices are soaring. Here’s how to add some to your IRA.