Feb 21st, 2010 | Written by daniel | Posted in Investing |

Many financial analysts and advisers will generally tell you that ETFs are good to own.  Some will even tell you the difference between ETFs and stocks or that not all exchange funds are created equal. I want to show you the amazing variety within a specific sector; the gold ETFs.

The first gold fund I want to talk about which is often regarded as the best gold ETF to own, is GLD. This is probably the most well known on the New York Stock Exchange. I think mainly because the ticker looks just like G-O-L-D. It’s in the famous SPDR fund family with over 40 billion in gold assets. This fund is about as simple as it gets, it holds gold, and only sells the gold in order to pay the expenses. At about 0.4% of its assets spent per year in maintenance costs, this isn’t bad, you try to keep track of that much gold (much less keep it safe) for less.

The second fund is GDX or the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF.  This fund is 80% invested in common stock within the gold mining industry.  It doesn’t really follow the price of gold too much at all. Right now it’s doing almost twice as well YTD as GLD. If you were looking to diversify from common stock with gold than this might not be a good buy, but if you think the miners will be making the money this could be the fund for you.

The last of the gold ETF funds is ETFS which trades on the London Stock Exchange and tracks the DJ-AIG Gold Sub-Index. Started in late 2009, it is a much smaller gold fund than the massive GLD, but the gold is held in Switzerland. The only differences you should see is a small difference in operating costs, but it gives you options if you think one operation is being run poorly.

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