Investors continue to plow into gold, which neared $1,300 an ounce on Thursday, as a hedge against economic uncertainty.
With weak employment, housing and other data expected to continue, some gold experts anticipate further inflows into gold and gold-related financial instruments. The CEO of miner Yamana Gold, Peter Marrone, recently compared these inflows to "a waterfall coming through a garden hose," in an interview with Reuters.
In the ETF arena, the top-selling gold product is SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), one of 94 SPDR ETFs trading in the United States.
To discuss the still-growing popularity of GLD and other SPDRs, AdvisorOne.com spoke by phone Thursday with Anthony Rochte, senior managing director and head of the intermediary business group of State Street Global Advisors (or SSGA), which manages SPDRs from its Boston headquarters and controls about 25% of the overall ETF market.
How much growth have SPDRs, and specifically GLD, been experiencing?
As of September 22, the 94 SPDR ETFs had about $203 billion in assets. And, of course, there's great demand for GLD over the past 18 months, so it's not a recent phenomena.
GLD has grown from $38 billion in late 2009 to $53 billion on September 22, and we expect to continue to see this trend.
What do you see driving this trend?
Investors look at gold as a potential inflation hedge, which should be more important further down the road, and they look at the currency aspect of gold, which serves them as a hedge against the equity markets and against currency markets.
Today's investors see gold as an asset class vs. an investment for tactical trading, which was the case several years ago during a period of appreciation.
For some institutions and advisor clients, gold is a static allocation within their overall commodity allocation. And these assets continue to grow.
As the dollar weakens and strengthens, gold can hedge against that movement – or movement in the equity markets. It really depends on what you think the markets are doing.
According to the Financial Research Corporation, the SPDR Gold Shares is the fifth-most-popular mutual fund in the United States so far in 2010. What makes GLD so dominant?
With more than $50 billion in assets, GLD is second-largest ETF in the world. [The SPDR S&P 500 ETF, SPY, is larger with $80 billion in assets.]
Within the ETF, we own the metal itself. It was launched late 2004. It was the first of its kind and had backing of the physical metal.
It was innovative and allowed investor to gain access and exposure to the gold market via an equity security backed by the physical metal.
