We call these people goldbugs. They’ve been saying 5000, 10,000, 50,000 gold for decades. They missed out on a generational bull market, gaining 50% from the bottom while stocks and real estate greatly outperformed that.
My view is there chance that GLD etc don’t have the real gold they claim is low, but not zero. After Enron, Worldcom, AIG, Wirecard, and many other financial scams, why trust Wall Street more than you have to?
You have to weigh this against the risk of physical ownership: lost, stolen, forgotten, etc.
There’s also management fees, though they are not as bad as they used to be. Still, when the market interest rate is under 1%, a 0.4% management fee is pretty bad. CEF I believe is even higher, which is why it has a consistent discount.
