Just looked at some data on gold's return on gold in last 10 years and honestly it's interesting how it stacks up against stocks. So if you'd thrown $1,000 at gold back around 2014, you'd be sitting on roughly $2,360 today. That's a solid 136% gain, or about 13.6% annually. Not bad right? But here's the thing - the S&P 500 crushed it with 174% over the same period. That's the reality of gold as an investment. The return on gold in last 10 years has been steady but nowhere near what equities delivered. Gold doesn't generate cash flow like stocks do. It just sits there. But that's actually why people buy it. When markets get messy or inflation spikes, gold becomes the safety blanket. Remember 2020? Gold jumped 24% while everything else was chaos. Same deal in 2023 when inflation was eating everyone's lunch - gold popped 13%. So the return on gold in last 10 years tells you something important: it's not about beating the market, it's about not moving with it. That's the hedge. Stocks go down, gold often goes up. That's the real value proposition. If you're looking at return on gold in last 10 years as your only metric, yeah, you might as well buy an index fund. But if you're thinking about portfolio balance and what happens when everything else implodes, that's a different conversation. Gold's your insurance policy, not your growth engine.