These Two Gold ETFs Stink I’ve been writing a lot about physical gold lately - the trends and bullish indicators. It’s an exciting time in this market, because there are so many interesting stories coming out every week that are supportive of higher gold prices. For instance, JP Morgan recently forecast that gold could soar to more than $4,000 a year from now…  And while I think everyone should own some physical metal… the real money is to be made in the stocks. That’s the whole focus of my Golden Portfolio IV (GPIV) service: putting you into gold stocks that don’t just keep pace with gold… but give you gains that outperform.  So far this year, my open positions in GPIV are up an average of 62%, which includes a stock I just added recently that’s only up 1% or so since I added it. Meanwhile, gold is only up 26%.  If you’ve been an investor in mining stocks or gold stocks generally, you know that beating the performance of the metal is actually not that common. Most individual companies do not outpace gold most of the time…  My big warning is that if you want to make real money in gold stocks, you need to avoid making some common mistakes. A big one that almost every gold investor I’ve ever talked to makes: Buying something like the Van Eck Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDX) or the Van Eck Junior Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDXJ).  And I get it: these kinds of funds seem like a no-brainer if you want to own gold miners. The thinking goes: you can simply buy these ETFs and get exposure to a wide swath of miners all in one go. GDX focuses on gold majors, with top holdings like Newmont, Barrick and Agnico Eagle.  GDXJ in theory, focuses on smaller firms - but they’re actually not that much smaller. All of the major holdings are well over $1 billion market cap companies, with some being over $30 billion or more… so there’s not much “junior” about this ETF that supposedly tracks junior mining stocks. Real junior miners tend to be below $500 million…  As an aside, this discrepancy between the “name on the tin” of an ETF and what it actually does is extremely common. It turns out, an ETF doesn’t have to actually match its investment strategy to its name.  One of the more egregious examples is the United States Natural Gas Fund ETF (NYSE: UNG), which you might expect would be fully invested in some kind of natural gas vehicles, but at any given time, only about 60% of the fund is invested in natural gas assets… the rest of the funds are in cash or cash equivalents.  But even if both gold ETFs were adequately invested, the real problem is much bigger. Because as I’ve said before: most gold stocks are terrible investments. GDX and GDXJ are not actively managed to sort the gold from the garbage - they simply track indexes. There’s no qualitative filter for either ETF - something you can learn by reading their prospectuses. The GDX prospectus: “VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX®) seeks to replicate as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the NYSE Arca Gold Miners Index (GDMNTR), which is intended to track the overall performance of companies involved in the gold mining industry.” “Companies involved in the gold mining industry” is a low bar. It includes companies that are unprofitable, shareholder unfriendly, economically doomed at any gold price or otherwise actively being mismanaged for the personal gain of company insiders. Van Eck doesn’t care about trying to find gold stocks that outpace gold… because they just collect their 0.51% in fees. That’s easy work.  It’s why over the long term, GDX and GDXJ tend to underperform the price of gold. This is a 4 year chart comparing the performance of gold (in green) to GDX (blue) and GDXJ (pink).  If you bought these two ETFs expecting to benefit from the 80% rise in gold over this period, you would be pretty disappointed.  But my work in GPIV is all about screening out the 99% of gold stocks - and focusing on high quality firms that give you a realistic chance to outperform the metal. That’s the bare minimum of what your gold stock investments should do for you. Over the long term, my research has actually crushed not just the metal, GDX and GDXJ, but stocks in general.  Here’s a snapshot of my portfolio through yesterday: You can see that my GPIV portfolio is beating out everything not just in 2025, but over the long term as well - by a large margin.  This service is designed to be used by anyone, from someone buying their first gold stock ever, to experienced investors who have been buying for decades. It’s my simplest portfolio and it gives you the kind of broad access to the sector that you might hope for from something like GDX or GDXJ.  The difference: I deliver.  Happy 4th of July. 🇺🇸🎆 Best,  Garrett Goggin, CFA, CMT Lead Analyst and Founder, Golden Portfolio P.S. If you've missed any of this weeks Golden Opportunity articles click here and access them all along with all past articles. Golden Portfolio © 2025 201 N US Highway 1 STE D10 #1197 Jupiter, FL 33477 Your privacy matters to us! View our Privacy Policy to see how we protect your information.  You have received this e-mail as part of your free subscription with Golden Portfolio. If you no longer want to receive these e-mails, unsubscribe here. Please note: The law prohibits us from giving personalized financial advice.