Just ran the numbers on a gold investment from a decade back and honestly, the returns are pretty solid. If you'd dropped $1,000 into gold back then, you'd be sitting on roughly $2,360 today. That's because gold went from averaging around $1,159 per ounce to hitting $2,745 - a 136% jump over ten years. Not bad for something that just sits in a vault looking shiny.

But here's where it gets interesting. Stocks absolutely crushed that performance. The S&P 500 climbed 174% in the same period, so if you were purely chasing returns, equities were the better play. That said, gold does something stocks can't - it moves in the opposite direction when markets tank. During 2020 when everything went haywire, gold jumped 24%. Same thing happened in 2023 when inflation anxiety was peaking - it popped 13%. You can own gold etf shares or physical bars, but the real appeal is that diversification benefit.

What's wild is how unevenly gold has performed historically. Back in the 1970s after Nixon dropped the gold standard, it was printing 40% annual returns. Then the 1980s hit and the party basically ended - from 1980 through 2023, annual returns averaged just 4.4%. Gold doesn't generate cash like stocks or real estate do, so it's purely a hedge play. When geopolitical stuff gets messy or currencies start losing value, that's when people notice their gold etf share price climbing.

The real question isn't whether gold beats stocks - it usually doesn't. It's whether you want something that holds value when everything else implodes. Forecasts are actually pointing to gold potentially reaching $3,000 per ounce soon. So yeah, gold won't make you rich, but when the broader market melts down, it's the asset that tends to stand its ground. That's the whole point of owning it.