Part of our series on building a mix that lasts. Start here: is 60/40 dead?
Which is real? Both, and the gap between them is the interesting part. In dollars, your S&P 500 fund rose about three-quarters in three years. Measured against gold, it lost ground, because gold did even better. We’ll go stock by stock through the biggest names to see who really beat it. Here’s what the pros are actually working on, though: not which ruler is right, but what share of their money would hold its value if the dollar keeps losing ground to hard assets. We’ll come back to that, with a rule you can set this weekend.
What Does Everyone Already Know?
That stocks have had a great run. Our price data shows the S&P 500 fund SPY up 75.0% over three years, with dividends, from the close on November 6, 2023, to Friday’s close.
What fewer people notice is that gold did better. Over the same three years, the gold fund GLD rose about 103%. Divide one by the other and the S&P 500, priced in ounces of gold, fell about 14%.
So Which Number Is Real?
Your bills are in dollars, so the dollar number is the one you live on. If your $100,000 became about $175,000, you can spend $175,000. That’s real.
The gold number answers a different question: how much of that gain came from the companies, and how much from the dollar itself buying less? Gold doesn’t earn anything, and nobody can print more of it. When stocks beat gold, the businesses outran the currency. When gold beats stocks, part of what looked like growth was the measuring stick shrinking. Over the last three years, by this measure, the stick shrank faster than the average business grew.
A simple way to see it on your own statement: take your balance three years ago and today, and divide each by the gold price on those dates. If the number of ounces went down, your money grew in dollars but lost ground against a hard asset. That doesn’t mean you lost money; your groceries are still priced in dollars. It means your plan has been quietly riding on the dollar.
Which Big Stocks Actually Beat Gold?
The index is an average, so we did the same sum for ten of its biggest companies. Here’s each one’s three-year return to Friday’s close, in dollars and priced in gold, on Trefis company data:
Five of the ten beat gold. Apple and Meta trailed it slightly, and Amazon, Berkshire and Microsoft lost more ground.
That’s a striking list. Two chip makers did most of the out-running, and both were hit hard on Thursday, when the AI trade unwound: chips and data-center builders fell hardest, after weeks of worry about power supply and growing opposition to new data centers. Nvidia closed at $181.60, down about 9% on the day, while SPY fell 4.4% to $733.00 and GLD rose 0.8%. We flagged power as the AI trade’s real risk on Nov 2, in Nvidia Stock’s Real Risk Isn’t China. It’s Power. And Microsoft, the third-largest U.S. company by market value, lost more than a fifth of its value in gold terms while its sales grew 18% over the past year. Strong businesses can still lose ground to a hard asset if you paid a high price for them.
What Does The Longer Record Say?
Three years is a short window, so we went back as far as our gold data goes, to November 2004. Here’s the S&P 500 fund priced in gold, with dividends, on month-end prices:
| Stretch | S&P 500 in gold |
|---|---|
| Nov 2004 to Aug 2011 | −70% |
| Aug 2011 to Dec 2021 | about 5x |
| Dec 2021 to Nov 6, 2026 | −24% |
| Whole 22 years | +13% |
Over 22 years they finished close. Along the way, each one beat the other by enormous margins for years at a time.
In dollars, SPY grew about 9.3 times and GLD about 8.3 times over the period, roughly 10.7% and 10.1% a year. Gold beat stocks in 11 of the 21 full calendar years from 2005 to 2025. Close to a coin toss year to year, and a near tie over two decades.
How Low Can Each One Go?
This is where gold earns its place, and where it costs you. Here’s the worst peak-to-bottom fall of each in the big selloffs, from daily prices with dividends, and when it got back to the old high:
| Selloff | SPY | GLD |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | −55% · back Aug 2012 | −29% · back Sep 2009 |
| 2011-2015 | −19% · back Feb 2012 | −46% · back Jul 2020 |
| 2020 | −34% · back Aug 2020 | −13% · back Apr 2020 |
| 2022 | −25% · back Dec 2023 | −21% · back Dec 2023 |
| Now | −6% from Oct 6 high | −25% from Jan 29 high |
In the 2008 and 2020 crashes, gold fell less and recovered sooner; in 2022 both got back in December 2023. In its own slump, it took almost nine years to come back.
On calendar years, gold rose 4.9% in 2008 while SPY fell 36.8%, and was roughly flat in 2022 while SPY fell 18.2%. Gold didn’t make money in every bad year. It just didn’t fall with stocks. The cost is the second row: from August 2011 to December 2015 gold lost almost half its value and didn’t recover until 2020, while SPY nearly doubled.
It’s swinging hard right now too. GLD sat about 25% below its January high on Friday. Investors pulled $1.93 billion out of it in the month to Nov 4, about 1.4% of its assets. That’s the usual pattern: money chases gold after a big run (GLD rose about 64% in 2025) and leaves after a fall. Chasing it either way is the expensive part.
What Should You Do This Week?
1. Measure your dollar bet. Add up what share of your portfolio would hold its value if the dollar kept losing ground to gold. For most people that’s close to zero: stocks, bonds and cash are all priced in dollars. Write the number down.
2. If you want a hedge, size it by rule. A small, fixed slice, say 5% to 10%, is enough to matter in a 2022 without sinking the plan in a 2013. In our test of mixes since 2017, a portfolio with 10% gold and 10% cash next to dividend stocks and the S&P 500 lost 6.2% in 2022, against 15.8% for 60/40. We break down what the gold and cash added in What If You Add Gold And Cash To A Dividend Portfolio?
3. Set a band and rebalance. For example: target 7%, trim above 9%, add below 5%. That way you sell some gold after runs like 2025 and buy some after falls like this year’s, without having to guess.
What this replaces: piling into gold after a 64% year, or dumping it after a 25% drop. The risk: gold can go nearly a decade without paying you back, and a gold slice will lag in long stock rallies like 2013-2021. That’s why it’s a slice, not a strategy.
What’s The Bigger Idea?
We call it Cash is a guaranteed loss, and its cousin: every dollar asset carries a quiet bet on the dollar. Your stock gains are real, and you can spend them. But part of what looks like growth, in some years, is the ruler shrinking. A small hard-asset slice is how a long-run investor holds a position on that without having to predict it. It fits with the rest of the 60/40 question we started in Is 60/40 Dead?: how many different kinds of trouble can your money survive?
Both numbers are real; the gold one tells you how big your dollar bet is. SPY is up 75.0% in three years in dollars and down about 14% in gold; only five of ten giants beat gold. Since 2004 the two finished close, about 10.7% and 10.1% a year, but each beat the other by huge margins for years at a time: gold fell less in 2008, 2020 and 2022, then took nine years to recover from 2011. If you want a hedge, set a small gold slice by rule, with a band, and rebalance.
What Should You Ask Next?
Follow this story with us: we’ll keep the S&P 500-in-gold line current and tell you what changed, and what didn’t, for a long-run plan.
How Much Of Your Money Is A Bet On The Dollar?
Most portfolios hold one currency bet without knowing it. If you have $1 million or more invested, have a Trefis expert partner advisor size your hedge for a second opinion in a free 15-minute call, or let Invest With Trefis build and run the plan for you.
For questions about this article or underlying research, email help@trefis.com.